Saturday, August 25, 2012

Samsung Found "Willfully" copying. Apple awarded over $1 Billion damages. Verdict in extremely fast!

In a shockingly quick return of the juries verdict Samsung has been found "wilfully" copying Apple products and design.
The fact that the jury came back extremely quickly says a lot. They obviously needed very little in the way of discussion and considered this very clear cut.
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Awarding Apple $1,051,855,000 in damages. Samsung, on the other hand, was granted a total of $0 in damages.
Here’s a quick rundown of how the jury came down on both of the companies. Remember, there are plenty of devices at play here — on Samsung’s side alone, there’s the Captivate, Continuum, Droid Charge, Epic 4G, Fascinate, Galaxy Ace, Galaxy Prevail, Galaxy S, Exhibit, Infuse 4G, Mesmerize, Nexus S 4G, Gem, Galaxy Tab, Galaxy Tab 10.1, Replenish, Vibrant, plus every carrier’s version of the Galaxy S II.
• The jury found no infringement by Apple on any of Samsung’s utility patents.
• The jury found that Samsung infringed on patents for ’381 “bounce back” scrolling functionality on all devices.
• On the ’915 patent, relating to one finger to scroll, two to pinch and zoom navigation, all but three Samsung devices (Ace, Intercept and Replenish) infringed.
• For Apple’s ’163 patent (tap to zoom) all Samsung devices except Captivate, Indulge, Intercept, Nexus S 4G, Transform and Vibrant infringed.
The jury then answered a question about inducement, regarding whether Samsung made its U.S. arms infringe: yes for the ’381 “bounce back” patent on all devices, yes for ’915 “one finger scrolling” for all devices except Replenish and yes for ’163 “tap to zoom” for all except Captivate, Continuum, Gem, Indulge, Nexus S 4G.
One of the biggest questions answered by the jury was if Samsung was willful in its infringement, which is where the major damages came into play. The largest damages came from the prepaid Galaxy Prevail (over $57 million).
The dense trial involved more than a dozen different patents, over 30 allegedly infringing devices and wide-ranging claims on design ownership; both sides argued their cases and defended themselves concurrently, all while enraging federal judge Lucy Koh.
Apple began with a full-fledged assault, hurling numerous trademark claims, design and technical patent claims and more; after judge Koh ordered Apple to pare it down, the company has focused on a few key patents, the simplicity of its design and working to prove a pattern of copying by Samsung. Apple’s total monetary demand was $2.525 billion.
Meanwhile, Samsung claimed that Apple’s iPhone and iPad were infringement and demanded $14.40 per device sold.
The verdict came in shockingly quickly, as the jury was only in deliberation for three days. The jury worked one hour late yesterday and reached a decision at 2:35 PT today. Over 700 individual decisions had to be made by members of the jury, which does not come from particularly technical backgrounds, on their complex worksheets.
It has been expected since the beginning of this trial that both companies would file appeals regardless of the verdict, so it would be shortsighted to assume that this is the end. That said, unless something happens as attorneys from both companies review the document, Apple is going to walk out of this courtroom much happier than Samsung is.

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