Jury: Samsung owes Apple one BILLION dollars

[Barrister]

Apple v. Samsung verdict is in: $1 billion loss for Samsung
Huge penalty could shift the balance of power among smartphone makers.

by Joe Mullin - Aug 24 2012, 3:57pm MDT
APPLE, INC. INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY IOS & IDEVICES LAWSUITS
769

Aurich Lawson

A jury of seven men and two women has just read the Apple v. Samsung verdict to a packed courtroom—and it was all bad news for Samsung. The Korean electronics giant has been found to infringe all of Apple's utility patents and all but one of the four design patents asserted, and was ordered to pay $1.05 billion in damages to Apple.

That's less than the $2.75 billion Apple asked for, but still a huge sum. If it holds up on appeal, it will stand as the largest patent verdict of all time. More importantly, it gives Apple a huge leg-up in the corporate patent wars, and immeasurably strengthens the company's negotiating position with regard to the Android phones it is struggling against.

Since Samsung's patent infringement was found to be willful in many cases, the $1.05 billion damages figure could go up. Patent law allows for up to triple damages in cases where infringement is found to be willful, although judges rarely grant that much in additional damages.

Samsung has been the number one seller of smartphones in the U.S. in the past few years, and this verdict will surely alter the balance of power. Apple's ultimate target is Google, which created the Android operating system that runs on Samsung smartphones. Steve Jobs thought Android was a rip-off of Apple products, and vowed to declare "thermonuclear war" on the competing OS, according to his biography.

Now, the world will get a chance to see just what the results of Jobs' promised nuclear attack will be. There's a danger that Samsung products could be kicked off the market following this verdict. However, that decision will have to be made in the coming weeks by U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh, who oversaw the case. Koh has scheduled a hearing on that issue for Sept. 20.

During closing arguments, Apple portrayed Samsung as a enthusiastic copycat that took a shortcut to profits, engaging in a three-month copying spree that piggybacked on the years of hard work Apple witnesses said it took to create the iPhone. Samsung, meanwhile, denied those copying allegations, and accused Apple of being a courtroom bully that refused to compete in the marketplace.

Apple's three utility patents, all found infringed, cover features like double-tapping to zoom and the "bounce back" technology that snaps images back into place. The company's four design patents cover elements like the contours and shape of the iPhone.

The jury also rejected Samsung's arguments that the patents were invalid.  Samsung escaped an infringement finding on only one of Apple's patents, a design patent asserted only against two Samsung tablets.

Samsung's counterattack against Apple, using six of its own patents, went nowhere. The jury found that Samsung's patents weren't infringed, and Samsung won't get any of the $422 million it was asking for.

The jury of seven men and two women returned the verdict faster than expected, after just two and a half days of deliberations in the San Jose federal courthouse. The jury was given access to one of each of the accused phones, which could be turned on and used, but did not have Internet access. At the end of the day, they had to fill out a complex 20-page jury verdict form [PDF] that includes hundreds of individual patent and trademark accusations against each company. Closing arguments took place late Tuesday.

The case, which began with opening arguments on July 31, has been an unusually tense one, with US District Judge Lucy Koh often sniping at lawyers on both sides.

The verdict was originally reported as $1.051 billion, but there were "inconsistencies" in the jury form, and the jury spent about an hour working those out. That lowered the final damages amount by $2.4 million, for reported total of $1,049,343,540.

The verdict follows closely after a South Korean court decided that both companies infringed each others' patents, a ruling seen to favor Samsung. However, the US battle is the centerpiece of the worldwide legal battle between the two smartphone companies, and is by far the most significant.

In addition to patent and trade dress claims, Apple also made antitrust and breach-of-contract claims, saying that Samsung was using its industry-standard patents in an illegal way. Those claims failed, but were a tiny part of Apple's case.

This win also strengthens Apple's hand in a newer lawsuit [PDF] filed against Samsung in the same court. That lawsuit, scheduled to go to trial in 2014, accuses a newer generation of phones of infringing Apple patents and trademarks. Apple's position is that Samsung has continued to make illegal copies of its product, releasing no less than 17 phones in the last part of 2011 that infringe Apple patents, including various Galaxy II models, the Galaxy Nexus, the Stratosphere, and others.

An Apple spokeswoman made this statement on the verdict:

"The mountain of evidence presented during the trail showed that Samsung's copying went far deeper than even we knew. The lawsuits between Apple and Samsung were about much more than patents or money. They were about values. At Apple, we value originality and innovation and pour our lives into making the best products on earth. We make these products to delight our customers, not for our competitors to flagrantly copy. We applaud the court for finding Samsung's behavior willful and for sending a loud and clear message that stealing isn't right."

In an e-mailed comment, a Samsung spokesperson said the verdict was a loss for consumers, and promised the fight isn't over:

"Today's verdict should not be viewed as a win for Apple, but as a loss for the American consumer. It will lead to fewer choices, less innovation, and potentially higher prices. It is unfortunate that patent law can be manipulated to give one company a monopoly over rectangles with rounded corners, or technology that is being improved every day by Samsung and other companies... This is not the final word in this case or in battles being waged in courts and tribunals around the world, some of which have already rejected many of Apple's claims."

Following the verdict, the jury chose not to speak to the throng of media outside the court building. Court staff escorted the nine jurors out of the building through a back exit.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/08/jury-returns-verdict-in-apple-v-samsung/

While of course this won't be over for awhile yet due to appeals, the trial decision is very important as it sets all of the facts subsequently used.

Veddy Interestink.

[DGuller]

Samsung could've bribed each jury member with $100 million, and still come out ahead. 

[Solmyr]

Fuck Apple.

[Admiral Yi]

Double tap zoom and snap back? 

I thought the suit was about real stuff.  This is like patenting the mouse double click.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Yeah, I won't pretend to be a patent lawyer but I've read a lot of articles (not just focused on Apple, but on all the big tech companies) and apparently most of them have huge multi-billion dollar patent portfolios (often times they'll buy up huge libraries in addition to the ones they develop themselves) and many of the patents really are for vague stuff that was probably already prior art when it was released.

For example one Apple patent you hear about all the time is slide to unlock, a feature that was present on a phone that came out more than 3 years before the iPhone.

FWIW, basically an identical patent infringement case was filed by Apple against Samsung in the UK. The UK court basically struck down all but like one of the patents as basically invalid garbage.

Apparently most of the Apple patents at stake in this trial should have been considered prior art, but the jurors literally said to the news after the trial, "we didn't spend any time considering the issue of prior art because it was too complicated." 

If that doesn't get overturned by an appellate judge I don't know what would.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Here is what the juror actually said to CNET:

'After we debated that first patent — what was prior art — because we had a hard time believing there was no prior art, that there wasn't something out there before Apple. In fact we skipped that one so we could go on faster. It was bogging us down

Note they filled out a really long and complicated form in like no time at all to render this verdict. Additionally, apparently there was a patent holding engineer on the jury who said that on the first day of the trial he had already decided Samsung was in violation, and he lead the jury through patent law and basically took control of the jury room utilizing his technical credentials to convince the rest of the jury that it was a clear case of patent infringement.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I'm all for juries in criminal trials as a check against people like BB, but why do we have jury trials for complicated technical civil matters? Seems retarded to me. This is the kind of thing that should be decided by a specialist judge or judicial panel that are experts in this type of law. Sort of like you have for administrative law hearings on things like social security and etc in the United States.

Now I know the constitution is explicit on a requirement for a jury trial on matters over a $20 amount or something ludicrously small, but just as a matter of principle it seems so stupid to have completely ignorant jurors trying to decide complex technical litigation.

[Admiral Yi]

Also, how in the world did this case end up being heard in Silicon Valley?

[Barrister]

Also, how in the world did this case end up being heard in Silicon Valley?

I took that as a positive - most patent legislation takes place in East Texas.

[Barrister]

I'm all for juries in criminal trials as a check against people like BB, but why do we have jury trials for complicated technical civil matters? Seems retarded to me. This is the kind of thing that should be decided by a specialist judge or judicial panel that are experts in this type of law. Sort of like you have for administrative law hearings on things like social security and etc in the United States.

Now I know the constitution is explicit on a requirement for a jury trial on matters over a $20 amount or something ludicrously small, but just as a matter of principle it seems so stupid to have completely ignorant jurors trying to decide complex technical litigation.

Serves you right then.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Also, how in the world did this case end up being heard in Silicon Valley?

I took that as a positive - most patent legislation takes place in East Texas.

Yeah, I was reading that in one of the tech magazines during my last long plane trip. Apparently the East Texas district courts and the next level up appeals court are particularly good grounds for patent trolls.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I heard the judge in this case was really hostile to Samsung during the trial (just going off internet rumblings), and it's up to her discretion on whether to award Apple triple damages they are eligible for...so this judgment could go up to $3bn.

[Barrister]

I heard the judge in this case was really hostile to Samsung during the trial (just going off internet rumblings), and it's up to her discretion on whether to award Apple triple damages they are eligible for...so this judgment could go up to $3bn.

I've been following the case, and never got that impression.  Instead the judge repeatedly pressured the parties to settle, saying there was a lot of risk to both parties.

[Razgovory]

I'm conflicted here.  Should I side with the dirty foreigners, or the company that makes products for pretentious idiots?

[Ed Anger]

I'm conflicted here.  Should I side with the dirty foreigners, or the company that makes products for pretentious idiots?

HEY NOW.