Apple, Samsung Blame Each Other for Lack of Settlement
Apple Inc. (AAPL) and Samsung Electronics Co. (005930) blamed each another for blocking progress toward a settlement of their patent disputes in a report to the judge who has presided over their two U.S. trials.
Context & Ripple Effects
This filing is the latest turn in a two-year settlement saga. After CEOs and chief lawyers first agreed to meet in April 2012, talks repeatedly collapsed — claims were dropped in May 2012 with the sides still far apart, and by February 2014 both companies had confirmed a failed mediation round while claiming to keep talking. The dispute has already produced hard court outcomes, including the 2012 ruling that forced Samsung to stop some Korea sales.
What changed in this Bloomberg report is the posture before the judge who oversaw the two U.S. trials: rather than quietly continuing negotiations after the February mediation failure covered by The Verge, each company submitted a report blaming the other for blocking progress — a public assignment of fault that signals neither side sees enough value in conceding to close the deal.
First-order effects
- Both companies stay locked into litigation spend: with settlement formally stalled and blame filed with the judge, legal teams on both sides pivot fully back to preparing the ongoing U.S. patent cases rather than hedging on a negotiated exit.
- The mutual-blame reports give each side a public narrative — Apple can claim Samsung refuses reasonable terms, and Samsung the mirror image — shaping how courts and regulators weigh their conduct going forward.
Second-order effects
- Samsung's handset business faces continued exposure to injunction risk of the kind it absorbed in 2012, when it was ordered to halt some Korea sales — every unsettled trial keeps product-line restrictions on the table.
- Rival smartphone makers watch the two largest players fail to reach terms even after CEO-level talks, which discourages smaller vendors from expecting cheap cross-licenses and pushes them to budget for defensive patent filings instead.
Third-order effects
- If CEO-level mediation cannot close gaps between two interdependent giants, the smartphone patent war's endgame shifts from negotiated peace to attrition — litigation costs become a standing line item until market leverage or exhaustion forces terms.
- A pattern of mutually blamed failures gives judges and policymakers evidence that private settlement processes are breaking down in megadisputes, strengthening the case for court-driven resolution as the default path in platform-scale patent conflicts.
The trend: Smartphone patent disputes between Apple and Samsung are hardening from episodic negotiation attempts into open-ended courtroom attrition, with each side publicly outsourcing blame to preserve negotiating leverage.