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This week’s Bloomberg cover story is a look at the darker side of Apple’s patent war with Google’s Android. As you can probably tell from the cover art, this one is not decidedly pro-Apple/Jobs. After the full rundown of the Patent war, it gets to this (which also seems to verify an earlier report):
People familiar with the situation, however, note that top-level executives at both Apple and Samsung have communicated lately about potential settlement options. Apple CEO Tim Cook does not seem to share his predecessor’s passion about laying all foes to waste. Cook appears to view litigation as a necessary evil, not a vehicle of cosmic revenge…
Still, the larger contest between Apple and Google is nowhere near resolution. And it’s not just about smartphones and tablets. While they struggle for dominance in mobile devices, Apple and Google are protecting their flanks from Microsoft and girding for a coming clash over the market for digital hubs that integrate the Internet with television.
In the short run, the tech giants could save themselves considerable legal fees and distraction if they were to lock their lawyers in a hallway of conference rooms and refuse to release them until they had crafted a series of comprehensive cross-licensing pacts. This process eventually resolved similar litigation in the desktop computer field. Such a solution “is still probably what will happen here,” says Stanford’s Lemley. “But in the meantime, these companies have paid their lawyers more than $400 million” over the last several years. “It’s not clear what they’re getting for that money.”
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