Google, Apple and Samsung are all in the winning business. All three companies have built incredible tech empires on the back of incredible ideas explored by the right people at the right time. What happens when such winners come into conflict with one another? One possible answer just arrived this morning.

Samsung and Apple have been at each others throats for years. The companies have followed each other through courts around the world claiming infringement of this or that patent. For the most part ,it appeared as if Google was playing it cool, protecting itself and sticking to the sidelines. Apparently that’s not exactly how the Patent Wars went down.

Because Google’s Android operating system is used to run Samsung smartphones, Google has a significant financial interest in helping Samsung defeat Apple in a $2 billion trial currently underway. Should Apple win, the iPhone maker could seek a court order banning U.S. sales of Samsung phones equipped with Android features.

Google Pays War Subsidies To Samsung

In the midst of the most recent patent lawsuit between Samsung and Apple, Google offered to pay some of Samsung’s legal costs in order to incent its pursuit of the case against the company. According to documents disclosed by Apple in the latest suit in the intellectual property battle with Samsung, Google offered to pay some of Samsung’s legal costs were it to lose the court fight. The claims were backed by videotaped testimony from a Google patent lawyer, who described terms of the search engine company’s agreement with Samsung.

Samsung eventually lost some of the more important cases in the first round of the patent wars, but Google’s plan may not have been to win. The company may simply want to waste Apple’s time and make the company look worse to tech fans. Google doesn’t want to take Apple phones off of the market, it may just want the company to have its resources wasted and its fans demoralized.

Apple Draws Google In

The reason that Apple presented the evidence to the court was to show that Google and Samsung are one and the same, showing that the company has a right to sue Samsung over patents that ultimately belong to Google. Because Google makes no direct economic gain off of the Android operating system, it is difficult for Apple to sue the company directly for the patents it holds.
Samsung does make a clear economic gain off of that operating system, and Apple needs to show that the company is allied with Google in order to show the direct line of gain from the supposed infringement of patents. The legalities of the battle are complex, but the most interesting thing about the proceedings is the duel between Google and Apple.

Apple and Google do not directly compete with each other for revenue on any important front, but the companies are still at each other’s throats because of their indirect competition. Apple will try to trap Google until a court recognizes the company’s complicity in Samsung’s patent infringement. Meanwhile both companies leak money into the hands of the legal profession, the real winners in the patent wars.