In the continuing battle in the courtroom between Apple and Samsung, it appears that Apple requested that disparaging comments on the Android operating system made by the company’s late CEO Steve Jobs be barred from being used in the trial, and apparently that request has been granted by a US judge.
According to an article over on Zdnet by way of Reuters, the US District judge approved Apple request to bar statements on Google’s Android OS that were made by Steve Jobs.
Apparently Apple wants to keep anti-Android statements that were made in the past by Jobs away from the courtroom, and claims that the ‘sentiments were not relevant to the patent case at hand.’
The barred statements were attributed to Jobs by biographer Walter Isaacson, where the late Apple CEO told Isaacson, “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. I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this.”
Samsung sought to introduce Steve Jobs’ statements in court claiming that the thermonuclear quote “speaks to Apple’s bias, improper motives and its lack of belief in its own claims in that they are a means to an end, namely the destruction of Android.”
On Wednesday, US District Judge Lucy Koh ruled that Jobs’ statements were not relevant, and added “I really don’t think this is a trial about Steve Jobs.”
The trial is scheduled to kick off as of the 30th of this month, and will probably take quite a while to sort out, and no doubt once the trial is over, it won’t be the last time Apple and Samsung are at loggerheads in the courts.