Samsung suffers a setback in German court, Legal costs now at $60 million

Samsung received some bad news this week from a Germany court. The Mannheim court ruled against one patent out of three mobile technologies Samsung claims Apple infringed. The other other two will be decided on January 27 and March 2. Samsung hasn’t decided if they will appeal the decision.
“We are disappointed that the court did not share our views regarding the infringement by Apple of this specific patent in Germany,” Samsung said in a statement.
We reported last month that Samsung was setting aside $200 million for these Apple-related legal battles which are in 10 countries, including the U.S., France, Australia, and Japan. So far Samsung has already spent $60 million since April 2011 for just Apple-related legal battles.
Clearly there’s no end in site to these legal battles. Money will continue to be burned up which could go towards innovation or better prices. It’s sad, but unfortunately this is the current state of mobile, and it’s here to stay for now.