Galaxy Nexus Not Designed to Avoid Apple Patent Claims, Says Samsung

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Yesterday we heard that the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, the company (and Google’s) next flagship Android handset, has been designed in order to avoid patent infringement claims in the future, specifically the ones coming from Apple.

That sort of a report seems to make sense considering that the Apple-Samsung conflict that started in April and it’s now being fought in over 20 different cases in 10 countries over 4 continents is a gigantic clash of intellectual property claims from each party. Apple is accusing Samsung of having stolen design elements from its iconic iPhone and iPad products which were then used in Galaxy smartphone and tablet designs while Samsung believes Apple is infringing on various patents of its own, including 3G communication patents.

The fact that Samsung is interested in making sure its Galaxy Nexus will not be included in any of Apple’s (and anyone else’s) patent cases seemed pretty logical at first. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized there’s one other way of interpreting yesterday’s report: Samsung may have not been that interested to similarly protect previous flagship devices, like the Galaxy S, the Galaxy S II or the Galaxy Tab 10.1 against patent claims.

Therefore I’m not surprised to hear that Samsung, via Won-Pyo Hong, a Samsung Mobile executive, decided to specifically address the design of the Galaxy Nexus during AllThingsD’s AsiaD conference. It now looks like Samsung may have not taken any special precautions when it comes to the Galaxy Nexus design, and that yesterday’s story was based on a rumor, according to Hong:

Hong said that Google and Samsung started work on the products many months ago, at a time the patent fight wasn’t as fierce:

“At the time this was not a really heavy issue,” Hong said, speaking at AsiaD. Hong said that patents were not a big part of the discussion in planning the lead device for Ice Cream Sandwich, now known as Android 4.0.

On the other hand, a conspiracy theory following Samsung’s and Google’s delay of the Galaxy Nexus announcement suggested Google had to make some modifications to Ice Cream Sandwich in order for it not to infringe on certain patents. But that sort of speculation has not been confirmed yet.

All we have to do now is to sit and wait for the Galaxy Nexus to hit various markets and see whether any of the specs, features or general design of the handset will disturb any of the big players in the mobile business.

Are you buying the Galaxy Nexus in November?