The war continues between the world's top two smartphone creators, Apple Inc. and Samsung as Hiroshi Lockheimer, Google's vice president for Android engineering, takes the witness stand at Federal Court.
According to a Businessweek report, Lockheimer, the first of Samsung Electronics Co.'s seven witnesses in the $2 billion patent trial, opened his testimony by stating that Google was more than capable of creating an operating system without copying any of Apple's patents.
The executive also claimed that Google was already developing Android even before he joined the company in 2006, with the ultimate goal of providing an open-source operating system for free. Google acquired Android in 2005.
"Rather than phones being mostly a hardware product, there was a lot of software involved, we provided that software," Lockheimer said while describing the evolution of smartphones, as quoted by Businessweek.
The Google exec was also quick to dismiss all claims that his team copied any concept from the iPhone.
Samsung also presented e-mails sent by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs stating that Apple is facing an "innovator's dilemma" leading to a "Holy War with Google," to cope with its Android and cloud service capabilities. Before he died in 2011, Jobs was also quoted by biographer Walter Isaacson saying that his mission was to destroy Android that he believed "ripped off the iPhone wholesale".
Apple seeks $2.2 billion in damages after accusing 10 of Samsung products to have infringed five patents covering user-interface designs including features like the automatic spelling corrections, slide-to-unlock function, and the ability for a user to make a call by clicking on a phone number within a web page or e-mail instead of having to dial it separately.
Samsung responded to the accusations by arguing that eight of Apple products, including the iPhone 5 and versions of the iPad and iPod, also infringed two of their patents, and is demanding about $7 million in damages.
Next to take the witness stand is Google engineer, Dianne Hackborn, who shall testify about the single click phone call feature that Apple claims to be infringed.
