Apple and Samsung, two of the world's biggest technology giants,
will square off in federal court on Monday in a closely watched trial over
control of the US smartphone and computer tablet markets.
Apple Inc filed a lawsuit against Samsung Electronics Co last year, alleging the world's largest
technology company's smartphones and computer tablets are illegal knockoffs of its popular iPhone and iPad products.
The Cupertino-based company is demanding $2.5 billion in damages, an award that would dwarf the largest patent-related verdict to date.
Samsung counters that Apple is doing the stealing and that some of the technology at issue - such as the rounded rectangular designs of smartphones and tablets - has been industry standards for years.
The US trial is just the latest skirmish between the two over product designs.
A similar trial began last week, and the two companies have been fighting in courts in the United Kingdom and Germany. The case is one of some 50 lawsuits among myriad telecommunications companies jockeying for position in the burgeoning $219 billion market for smartphones and computer tablets.
In the United States, US District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose last month
ordered Samsung to pull its Galaxy 10.1 computer tablet from the US market pending the outcome of the trial, though the judge barred Apple attorneys from telling the jurors about the ban.
Court-ordered mediation sessions attended by Apple's chief executive Tim Cook and high-ranking Samsung officials failed to resolve the legal squabble, leading to a highly technical trial of mostly expert witnesses opining on patent laws and technology.
Cook is not on the witness list and is not expected to testify during what is expected to be a four week-trial.
Experts say Apple was motivated to file the lawsuit, at least in part, by its late founder's public avowals that companies using Android to create smartphones and other products were brazenly stealing from Apple.
To that end, Samsung's attorneys made an unsuccessful pitch to have the jury hear excerpts from Steve Jobs' authorised biography.
"I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple's $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong, I'm going to destroy Android, because it's a stolen product," Jobs is quoted as saying in Walter Isaacson's book
Steve Jobs published in November.
"I'm willing to go thermonuclear war on this."
But the judge barred those statements in a ruling earlier this month.
Apple lawyers argue there is almost no difference between Samsung's products and Apple's and that the South Korean company's internal documents show it copied Apple's iconic designs and its interface.
"Samsung once sold a range of phones and a tablet of its own design," Apple lawyers argue in their documents filed Wednesday. "Now Samsung's mobile devices not only look like Apple's iPhone and iPad, they use Apple's patented software features to interact with the user."
Samsung denies the allegation and counter-charges that Apple copied its iconic iPhone from Sony. Samsung lawyers noted that the company has been developing mobile phones since 1991 and that Apple jumped into the market only in 2007.
with inputs from Associated Press
PHOTO: Associated Press 
Special 
