Another day, another round of volleys today between Samsung and Apple occurred as the tech world watched and listened to the “Williams”. At the end of the day, Intel found itself an accomplice to Apple’s accused sins. The crew in Cupertino has unexpectedly pulled Intel into the brawl, based on testimony from Tim Williams about Samsung’s ’941 and ’516 patents.
The gist is this: Intel makes a baseband processor -it deals packet transmission and power regulation for data channels on cellular devices- that it has its own separate patents for. It uses them freely in whatever way it wishes, as it should, and as William Lee pointed out, that includes selling to Apple for inclusion in their products.
Lee has a good point that Apple didn’t design or manufacture the baseband processor, and William does as well, regarding his assertion that both the iPhone 4 and 3G models infringe on the aforementioned patents. The problem lies in what happened after this all occurred. Lee went on to take part in some thinly-veiled character assassination, making Williams reveal he had netted around a cool $1 million testifying for previous cases regarding this type of testimony.
Motorola and HTC were also shown to be Williams prior clients, as it were, as he took the stand against Apple. It’s worth mentioning here this is standard practice and payout for major witnesses in an epic trial such as this one.
This ongoing saga has all the makings of a tech soap opera. Do you think Apple still has the upper hand with today’s revelations? Will Samsung come out of this trial swinging with “patent truth” on their side? Sound off in the comments below!
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