Samsung and Apple executives will sit down to discuss a possible patent settlement starting on May 21, according to court documents submitted Friday.
Apple's Tim Cook and Samsung's Gee-Sung Choi, as well as the general counsels for both firms, are scheduled to meet on May 21 and May 22 in a San Francisco courtroom in an effort to work out their differences.
Both sides must submit a settlement conference statement by May 9, which should include a statement of facts and summary of the proceedings, as well as each side's position on settling, among other things.
As patent blogger Florian Mueller noted, Magistrate Judge Spero has also requested that the companies provide a "candid" evaluation of whether or not they can prevail on the charges.
"I think this is wishful thinking because the parties won't really say that any of their claims are legally weak, no matter in front of whom these talks take place, but there's no way they would ever express even the slightest skepticism over any of their claims in front of a judge involved with the actual litigation," Mueller wrote in a blog post.
Samsung and Apple first agreed to patent settlement talks about two weeks ago. If the companies cannot reach an agreement, the case proceeds to trial in late July.
There will be a lot of ground to cover. As Mueller pointed out in a subsequent post, there are currently more than 50 patent suits pending between Apple and Samsung in 10 countries.
During a recent earnings call, Apple's Cook said he has "always hated litigation."
"We just want people to invent their own stuff. And so if we could get to some kind of arrangement where we could be assured that's the case and a fair settlement on the stuff that's occurred, I would highly prefer to settle versus battle," Cook said, according to a SeekingAlpha transcript. "But ... the key thing is that it's very important that Apple not become the developer for the world. We need people to invent their own stuff."