Could this be it? Could Apple and Samsung finally bury the hatchet in the long-standing patent war, the mess of which has roamed news sites constantly over the past few months? Our gut feeling tells us no, but there’s hope for progress.
Foss Patents‘ Florian Mueller, who has been keeping a close eye on the impending court hearing, has noted that the dates for the companies mediation session has been brought forward slightly from June as previously expected, to May 21st and 22nd.
With less than a month to go, both Apple and Samsung’s CEOs don’t have a huge amount of time to ready their cases and no doubt when they do finally come together, it won’t go smoothly. As it stands there are around ten offensive cases tied to individual countries underway from Apple against Samsung but in truth, the number is closer to 31 when you take into account the case in place in Alicante which actually covers the 27 member states of the European Union (27 + 4 non-EU lawsuits in the US, Japan, South Korea and Australia = 31).
In the meantime Samsung are planning to launch their next flagship the Galaxy S3, which might give Apple new reasons to get riled up, whilst Apple’s new flagship the iPhone 5 isn’t expected to appear until June at the earliest.
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