Apple and Samsung have been engaged in a long patent battle in the United States, however, everything has come to an end as the jury has deliberated, and it has found Samsung guilty of infringing on Apple’s design patents.
As a result, the South Korean company will be forced to pay $1,049,343,540, which is a lot less than the $2.5 billion asked by the Cupertino-based company at the beginning of the trial.
There were nine jurors who all agreed that Samsung has violated Apple’s intellectual property therefore it needs to pay damages to the company. In addition, Apple will also have the right to demand an injunction against the infringing Samsung devices as of next month.
The trial also involved a bunch of Samsung patent claims, but the jurors found Apple not guilty of infringing any patents. The South Korean firm was unable to demonstrate that Apple violated its patents therefore the iPhone maker will not pay anything to Samsung.
Apple didn’t convince the jurors to dictate a higher penalty against Samsung because it didn’t infringe on its UMTS standards-related patents as Intel had a long-standing agreement with the South Korean conglomerate.
The jury found Samsung guilty of infringing Apple’s patents with most of the accused devices, and the biggest problems were caused by the design-related patents. The main reason why Samsung lost in this case was Susan Kare.
She is an expert artist and graphic designer who worked at Apple, NeXT, while later in her carrier she designed elements for Microsoft and IBM among others.
Susan Kare’s testimony was clear: Samsung’s devices are inspired from Apple’s iPhones. Although Samsung said that she shouldn’t have been brought into the trial because she worked for Apple, the jury had none of it.
Other patents mentioned by Apple were related to scrolling, two-finger gestures, tap-to-zoom, and other user-interface gestures.
When the jury was reading the verdict, Samsung’s legal representatives realized that they’re going to lose this one, but they still had one more hope. Judge Koh could have said that Apple’s patents are invalid, however, she decided that all patents are valid.
The damages could have been a lot higher, but surprisingly enough (considering the previous decisions), the jury declared that Apple’s unregistered iPhone-iPad trade dress are not “protectable or famous” therefore they will not be included in the final call.
At first, the jury said that Samsung will have to pay $1,051,855,000 in damages, but Judge Koh said that this is impossible so the jurors re-assessed the damages. Eventually it was proven that the jury had included some damages related to several devices that didn’t infringe on any patents therefore the amount was reduced to $1,049,343,540.
The top three accused Samsung products by amount awarded to Apple are Fascinate with more than $143 million, Epic 4G with $130 million, and the Samsung Galaxy S II / Epic 4G Touch with over $100 million.
Other notable devices per amount awarded are the Vibrant with more than $89 million, T-Mobile’s Galaxy S II with $83 million, and the Captivate with over $80 million.
There are three accused devices for which Apple will receive nothing – the international versions of the Samsung Galaxy Ace, Galaxy S, and Galaxy S II.
Although there were more than 700 patent-related questions that needed to be answered, the jury managed to give a verdict after only two days. When the trial was over, all jurors left without speaking to the media, and so far none of them gave an interview to anybody.
Upon hearing the verdict, Judge Judy Koh said that the next step in this trial is to hold a preliminary hearing regarding injunctions. Apple will have to file the legal requests before August 27th, while Samsung will have two weeks at its disposal to give a response.
After that, the hearing has been scheduled for September 20th in order to give Samsung ”maximum time” to prepare for the injunctions.
The final and full verdict can be read at this link here.
Navin
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