Apple for the day

Brian Chen has an article in The New York Times about Apple v Samsung:

Apple and Samsung Electronics have said they had agreed to drop patent litigation against each other in countries outside the United States, including Germany, Australia, and Japan. But they said they were not done fighting. In a joint statement, the companies said they were continuing to pursue existing legal cases in the United States. They also clarified that they had not agreed to license technologies from each other.
Still, the truce outside the United States suggests that tension may be cooling down between the two electronics giants. Over the past few years, Apple and Samsung have been engaged in some of the most high-profile patent disputes in courtrooms.
After Apple sued Samsung in 2011, accusing it of copying some features of the iPhone, Samsung fired back with lawsuits in seven countries, including Italy, the Netherlands, Britain, and France. Many of those overseas lawsuits revolved around so-called standard essential patents, which cover basic technologies that companies must use in their products to comply with industry standards.
In 2012, the European Union started an antitrust investigation against Samsung over its use of standard essential patents in its legal fights with Apple. Earlier this year, Samsung reached a settlement with the EU, in which it agreed that it would not seek injunctions in Europe over standard-essential patents for five years.
The biggest fights between Apple and Samsung have taken placed in the United States, and the companies have not suggested that this would change. Apple won its first big patent fight against Samsung in a California courtroom in 2012, and Samsung still owes nearly a billion dollars in damages. The case is under appeal.
But Apple’s victory was less decisive in a second big patent trial earlier this year. Jurors concluded that Samsung owed Apple a hundred and twenty million dollars in damages for violating three patents, far below the two billion dollars it had demanded in total. They also decided that Apple owed Samsung a hundred and fifty thousand dollars for violating two patents.

Rico says this ain't over...