Stefan Mileschin

An Aussie judge has given Apple and Samsung a cuff around their lugholes for wasting the court's time with their silly patent tiff.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, Federal Court Justice Annabelle Bennett said that the pair's patent dispute over wireless transmission technology was "ridiculous" and might be best settled in mediation.

Samsung sued Apple, claiming the maker of iPhones is infringing three patents covering data transmission over the 3G wireless spectrum. The suit was in response to Apple's claim that Samsung stole its design ideas for computer tablets and phones.

But the move did not impress Bennett who wanted to know why "on earth are these proceedings going ahead? It's ridiculous".

Samsung said that the problem was that after Apple obeyed its late CEO's orders to "go thermonuclear" on Samsung for nicking the ideas he had nicked from someone else, Jobs' Mob forgot to pay Samsung a licence fee for the technology that allows phones to conduct multiple tasks including taking calls while uploading photos to the internet.

Apple told the court that it was willing to pay but Samsung refused, so ner.

Bennett wanted to know why she should not order the parties to go to mediation and has given the two sides a week to come up with a good reason to proceed with the hearing.

The reasons will probably be along the likes of "he started it" and "because they smell".

The two have tried mediation before, but were unable to resolve their religious differences. Apple really believes it invented everything, and Samsung stole it. Samsung believes that it has the right to defend itself by using patents it would normally give out cheaply.

But Bennett seems to have twigged that it is all part of a big legal game which is not really doing much other than trying to harm the other side.

When one of the pair tried to hold separate trials on Apple's and Samsung's claims she told the pleader to sling his hook, presumably because it would just ratchet up the theatre, put a few lawyers' kids through university and do nothing else to help humanity.

http://news.techeye.net/hardware/app...ted-by-a-judge