Samsung: the Judge, Jury, and Executioner in the Apple Case

Everyone loves either their Samsung or their iPhones. These amazing companies provide us with the most exciting features, incredible camera quality and memory space. But how do they do it? Well, they are the most powerful competitors the world has ever seen. They provide us with the newest technology, best apps and performances. You need music? You go to their respective apps. You need online slotmachines? You go their game selections and choose one. You need docs? You go to their apps for documents.

The two gigantic companies always look to surpass one another, while making us the users extremely happy and excited about what they’ll come up next.

However, the “come up next” thing is what led these two companies to attend trials. In 2011, Apple started suing Samsung for stealing some of their patent for design and utility.

Samsung was being trialed for infringing 3 Apple patents for design and 2 patents for utility. In the earlier trials, it was determined that Samsung has to pay Apple for some damages for design patent violations.

The thing is, the “article of manufacture”, which applies for the design patent, says that basically if Samsung infringed the design patent, it has to pay sales profit of the product based on that patent.

While Apple claimed that the whole design was stolen, Samsung argued that it is only a set of components, which significantly reduced the damages.

As for the design patents, the jury decided that Samsung needs to pay Apple for one design patent, the one for the grid of icons on the screen, while for the second, for a rectangular and round-cornered black mobile device, they decided that Samsung shouldn’t reimburse.

So now, Samsung asked the court to either retry the case and redefine the damages or dismiss the verdict. In the motion, Samsung says that the verdict is not supported by enough evidence and is excessive. As Apple wanted $1 billion for the damages and Samsung wanted to pay only $28 million, the jury split the difference and asked Samsung to pay Apple $539 million.

Having in mind that this is a now 7-year-old confrontation, we’re still to see what the outcome of the trial will be. However, Samsung did really compile a 34-page post-trial motion where they say the jury was unreasonable and that the verdict should be no more than $28 million. These numbers are drastically different.

In addition, Samsung has filed another separate motion demanding Apple to reimburse $145M in another infringement case in relation to multi-touch, since the recent invalidation of the patent.

The next hearing has been scheduled for July 26 and Apple is bound to respond to the latest motion until and no later than June 21.

It is absolutely incredible how these two giant names have a dispute over phones that we adore. And then again, this battle seems like a never-ending one. Nevertheless, we are happy they exist and provide us with the best of the best phone features and performances.