Samsung received yesterday the verdict on its appeal from Judge Lucy Koh, the federal presiding over two of the Apple versus Samsung lawsuits in the North District of California. The lawsuit is the one back from August 2012, that caught the attention of all the press, when the aftermath was that Samsung infringed 4 patents of Apple’s iPhone line, mostly regarding to UX (User Experience) was court-ordered to pay over a billion dollars to Apple.
Though the verdict did not reduce the sum involved in the previous decision, the judge reversed the finding that Samsung’s act of patent infringement was willful mainly because Samsung had reasons to believe that what it was doing was legal. The judge also denied further modifications to the ruling and also denied the option of a new trial.
The good news for Samsung came when the jury denied Apple any damage enhancements, which would result in Apple getting as much as three times the payments on some parts of the infringed patents. She also denied Apple any enhancements of trade dress damages. Furthermore, she ruled against Samsung’s claims that one of Apple’s multi-touch patents and four of its design patents were indefinite. If you read these patents, you might get a sense of why Samsung claims this, one of which patents a hand-held device of rectangular shape with rounded edges and with black and white casing (D ‘677 patent). That pretty much sounds like anything since the first remote control, but maybe that’s just me.
Samsung also added two patent claims against Apple which both have been rejected by judge Koh (regarding Wi-Fi and 4G LTE). The judge also invalidated Samsung’s accusations that the first trial favored Apple in the sense of giving it a chance to cross-examine Samsung’s witnesses, a privilege that Samsung allegedly was not able to do with Apple’s witnesses, and other accusations regarding the way the trial has been conducted, stating that the
The sum Samsung had to pay for the infringement was $1,051,855,000.
Another case in this never-ending trial wars between the two, had a different verdict was the trial back in June 2012, when a UK judge ordered Apple to publish on its UK website and in British newspapers that Samsung’s Galaxy Tab did not copy iPad’s design, and that this should be posted for six months to save Samsung’s image in the UK. Samsung also requested that Apple should not be able to publish statements saying that the Galaxy line infringes Apple’s patents , but the judge declined saying that Apple is entitled to their opinion.