The jury deciding Apple Inc. (AAPL) and
Samsung Electronics Co.’s trial over smartphone technology left
intact the $120 million it awarded the iPhone maker May 2 after
further review of the verdict.
Jurors spent more than two hours deliberating today after
U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California, directed
them to review a possible error in their May 2 verdict. The jury
recalculated damages for as many as four Samsung phones found to
infringe Apple patents and arrived at the same grand total as
three days ago.
The verdict in the second U.S. trial between the world’s
top two smartphone makers sets the stage for each company to
seek a judge’s order banning U.S. sales of some older devices
found to infringe its patents.
Apple, which sought as much as $2.2 billion in damages, won
infringement findings on three of its five patents at issue in
the case. Jurors also found that Apple infringed one of two
Samsung patents at issue and awarded $158,000 in damages to the
maker of Galaxy smartphones.
The jury of four women and four men heard almost four weeks
of evidence in the same courtroom where the first trial was held
two years ago. The second case revolved around whether Samsung
used features in Google Inc.’s Android operating system that
copied the iPhone maker’s technology.
Smartphone Makers
The world’s top two smartphone makers have spent hundreds
of millions of dollars in legal fees on battles across four
continents to dominate a market that was valued at $338.2
billion last year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Samsung had 31 percent of industry revenue, compared with
15 percent for Apple, whose share of the market has shrunk as
the touch-screen interface has become more commonplace and
Samsung, LG Electronics (066570) Inc. and Lenovo Group Ltd. have
introduced lower-cost alternatives.
“We agree with the jury’s decision to reject Apple’s
grossly exaggerated damages claim,” Suwon, South Korea-based
Samsung said today in a statement. “Although we are
disappointed by the finding of infringement, we are vindicated
that for the second time in the U.S., Apple has been found to
infringe Samsung’s patents.”
While Samsung’s claims against Apple were rejected by the
jury in the 2012 trial, Samsung won an import ban from the
International Trade Commission on some versions of the iPhone 4
and iPad 2, only to have it vetoed in August by President Barack Obama’s administration.
$930 Million
Apple was awarded $930 million in the first trial. In that
case, which involved earlier models of smartphones and tablets,
Apple’s request for an order barring sales of infringing Samsung
phones was rejected by Koh. Apple has said the ban was more
important to it than monetary damages.
In the second trial, Apple claimed 10 Samsung devices,
including the Galaxy S3, infringe five of its patents. The
patents cover a range of user-interface designs for the iOS
software that powers iPhones and iPads.
Samsung contended that five Apple devices, including the
iPhone 5 and versions of the iPod, infringe two of its patents.
Samsung sought $6.2 million in damages.
Kristin Huguet, a spokeswoman for Cupertino, California-based Apple, said May 2 that the jury’s verdict “reinforces
what courts around the world have already found: that Samsung
willfully stole our ideas and copied our products.”
The verdict is the eighth-largest jury award in the U.S.
this year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. It’s the
fourth-largest jury award in a patent case this year.
The case is Apple Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co. (005930), 12-cv-00630, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California
(San Jose).
To contact the reporter on this story:
Joel Rosenblatt in federal court in San Jose, California, at
jrosenblatt@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Michael Hytha at
mhytha@bloomberg.net
Peter Blumberg, David Glovin
Source:
www.bloomberg.com
