A potted history of tech firms and lawsuits infographic

Unless you have been living under a rock, you have probably heard about those crazy tech firms lawsuits. The last I kind of followed was the Samsung smartphone one. I have to say I find it a bit crazy that they got sued for creating a smartphone, it is like IBM suing everyone that makes a computer, and those amounts are so big I can’t even imagine what they are like. So I have this neat infographic below explaining what those settlements would buy, in the case of Samsung, just enough Iphone 5 to equip a small country.

The world’s largest technology firms are constantly trying to get ahead of each other in just about every market. Smartphones, tablets, games consoles – no matter what product they’re all trying to sell, it seems they’ll try to come out on top by any means necessary, but in some cases, are they taking it too far?

This infographic shows that if they fall foul of the authorities or even each other, they could expect to pay a hefty fine or court settlement. The biggest tech-based lawsuit of all time saw Microsoft asked to pay a huge $1.4bn to the European Commission because they were seen to be behaving anti-competitively.

Billion-dollar blows

Two more lawsuits involving tech giants cost in excess of $1bn for those affected. One between Apple and Samsung concerning smartphone patents was pretty intense. The latter was forced to pay just a shade over $1bn to Apple, although on appeal the amount has been reduced to roughly half that amount.

The other cases listed here show that some firms will stop at nothing to ensure they remain market leaders, but it also shows that, as far as the customer is concerned, they can occasionally forget about the consequences of taking them for granted.