In the technology court case that many would assume might never end (and in other territories, has not yet happened), a seemingly-decisive verdict has been made in the Apple-Samsung feud in America, with Apple claiming victory… although not for everything they were asking for.
While that sort of limited outcome is natural considering the huge list of ‘copyright infringements’ Apple held against their South Korean rivals, the fact that they are now due to take home around $119.6m from a requested $2.2b (little over 5%) will be far from what their legal team might have been aiming for when the cases began.
The decision was made by a court in California, where the 5% amount came in spite of Samsung being declared as having infringed on 40% of Apple’s claims (2 from 5).
Unfortunately for the American iPhone manufactures, the smartphone patents they were deemed to have had been the victim of breach on amounted to the ability to ‘call phone numbers included in emails’ (the offending Samsung sets being the Galaxy Nexus and Stratosphere devices), and the ‘slide to unlock’ feature and ‘auto complete’ patents (infringed by a selection of other handsets).
Whilst the first and the last of the three still appear to be excessive on paper, Apple have regardless celebrated their triumphs in the courtroom, as spokeswoman Kristin Huguet noted in a statement: “Samsung willfully stole our ideas and copied our products. We are fighting to defend the hard work that goes into beloved products like the iPhone, which our employees devote their lives to designing and delivering for our customers.”
On the much less-regarded flipside of the battle (Samsung suing Apple), the efforts of Samsung to bring Apple to justice for similar reasons has resulted in a financially lower and proportionally worse result, with Apple ordered to pay Samsung $158,400 from a total $6m sought by Samsung, close to 3% of what they were after.
One final decision on the American case will occur today (5 May) with the jury decision on whether one other Samsung device infringes the ‘auto-complete’ patent held by Apple, but while there is plenty of grounds to believe that one side or the other will demand an appeal, will today finally mark the end of their technological patent feud?