If you remember back in the days of the Samsung Galaxy S2, Apple was in a heated court battle with their Korean rivals over patents that dealt with mundane things like icons and pinch to zoom gestures. That patent battle was in the billions of dollars, it even threatened a sales ban of Samsung devices. Now a similar thing might be cooking up, only this time, Samsung owns the patent in question.
The patent is about the design of smartphones whose front panels are all covered by glass apart from the top part which has a cutout for components such as selfie camera, earpiece and sensors. If that description doesn’t ring any bells, it’s the rumored design of the upcoming Apple iPhone 8 and that of the recently launched Essential phone from the founder of Android.
According to the details of the patent, the filing was done back in May 2016 in South Korea, Samsung’s home country. That was way before any of those two mentioned devices got launched/ rumored. If the patent is awarded to Samsung, a nasty court battle could emerge, one that might even get the upcoming iPhone banned from stores. The filling could also give us a hint of how the Galaxy S9 might look like. All we can do right now is wait and see how this unfolds.