After two years of dealing with a trial which nearly ended in 2012, a decision has finally been made regarding how much Samsung owes Apple for its patent infringement. On Thursday, a US jury ruled that the Cupertino tech giant would receive $290 million, instead of the full $1 billion settlement put forth in 2012.
Although Apple will not receive the entire $1 billion which it had been trying to get, yesterday’s ruling puts the company close to that figure. Even though the 2012 jury miscalculated how much Samsung owed to Apple, Judge Lucy Koh still upheld $640 million of the original decision. The latest case was only meant to determine how much extra Apple would receive.
Since the case began, Samsung had argued that it should only have to pay $52.7 million, an amount significantly smaller than the 2012 or 2013 jury saw fit, considering how blatant the patent infringement was. The case, which began in 2011, was centered around a handful of Apple patents for pinch-to-zoom and tap to zoom software. Along with the software patents, Apple was also the first company to receive a patent for design touches such as a flat black screen.
Whether or not these types of patents should be handed out (due to how general they are) is still being discussed among many people in the tech world. Standard-essential patents are a big point of debate among companies, considering the numerous million-dollar cases that have been centered around them.
Yesterday’s decision came from a jury which simply seemed to be more convinced with the larger amount of information provided by Apple regarding the patents and how Samsung had infringed upon them.
We felt like we had way more information from Apple and we were left wondering why we hadn’t gotten other information from Samsung – Goldman-Hall, Juror
Samsung is disappointed by the verdict overall and unlike Apple which told the jury that this decision would benefit other US companies, Samsung feels as though it will hurt the industry.
The big question moving forward is whether or not Apple can successfully seek out a ban against the Samsung devices which infringed upon Apple’s patents.