Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. are starting to wind down their global patent dispute. Smartphone giants announced in a joint statement that they will drop all patent lawsuits outside the U.S. However, the two companies still haven’t settled their patent disputes within the U.S.
The two companies have sued each other in Australia, Japan, South Korea, Germany, Netherlands, the UK, France, and Italy, and all these cases are being dropped, without being settled and without any cross-licensing agreements being negotiated. The companies disclosed the change in legal strategy in a joint e-mail. Apple and Samsung said they would push ahead with the most high-profile cases taking place in the U.S.
Apple first sued Samsung in the U.S. for copying features of the iPhone in 2011. Samsung then sued Apple for patent infringement in South Korea, Japan, Australia, the Netherlands, Germany, France, Italy and the U.K. Apple filed countersuits in five of those countries.
“Apple and Samsung have agreed to drop all litigation between the two companies outside the United States,” the companies said in a joint statement. “This agreement does not involve any licensing arrangements, and the companies are continuing to pursue the existing cases in U.S. courts.”
Earlier, Apple and Samsung agreed in June to drop their appeals of a patent-infringement case at the U.S. International Trade Commission that resulted in an import ban on some older Samsung phones. In the U.S., Apple had two victories against Samsung: $930 million in 2012 and $120 million in May of this year. The case is still unresolved though.
William Mulholland was a self taught architect whose career came to a crashing halt on March 12, 1928, when his St. Francis Dam failed just hours after being inspected by Mulholland himself. The dam sent 12.5 billion gallons (47,000,000 m³) of water flooding into the Santa Clarita Valley, north of Los Angeles. It laid the town of Santa Paula under 6 meters of mud and debris. Some parts of Ventura County were covered up to 21 m high pile of muck. The final death count has been estimated at 450, including 42 school children.
During the peak of the cold war, America launched its first space station called the Skylab. Weighing 75 Metric tons, Skylab was launched on 14 May 1973 by a Saturn rocket into a 435 km orbit. The launch is sometimes referred to as Skylab 1. There was severe damage to the vehicle during launch. The station lost its micrometeoroid shield, sun shade and one of its main solar panels. Even the debris from the lost micrometeoroid shield prevented the deployment of all solar panels and left the station with a huge power deficit. The first american space station failed miserably and cost the tax payers about $3.6 Billion dollars. There were of course a lot of lessons learned from this disaster which were later corrected on the ISS.
This is without a doubt one of the most prominent engineering failures, probably the most photographed blunder too. This bell tower’s tilt began during its construction itself. It was caused by an inadequate foundation on a ground that was too soft on one side to properly support the tower’s weight. The tilt increased gradually in the following decades till the structure was stabilized (and the tilt partially corrected) by efforts in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
