[jyl]

These lawsuits are not new. There were going on under Steve Jobs too.

Apple has had some success in its prior lawsuits vs Samsung, winning injunctions against various models of Galaxy handset.

At one point, Apple was one of Samsung's largest customers. Samsung made Apple's processor and sold NAND flash to Apple. Apple has moved its processor to a different fab and has been shifting NAND purchases too. As the largest buyer of NAND in the world by far, Apple is a big customer for Samsung to lose.