After partial win, Apple comments on second Samsung trial as award grows
Following the jury's verdict in the second Apple vs Samsung trial, which found infringement in three of the five patents Apple argued, the company issued a statement thanking the jury and suggesting a continued fight to defend the company's innovative products.
"We are grateful to the jury and the court for their service," Apple stated to the media. "Today's ruling reinforces what courts around the world have already found: that 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."
Apple's '172 patent related to text input prediction and spell checking, had already been ruled infringed by Judge Lucy Koh. For that patent, the jury found Samsung willingly infringed Apple's intellectual property.
The three out of five verdict is only a minor win for Apple, but the three patents effectively amount to a $6.40 royalty per unit among the devices found infringing. The majority of the damages were accrued by Samsung's Galaxy SIII flagship, which introduced in May 2012.
The jury is being retained to reconsider their decision to award Apple $0 in royalties for the even older Galaxy SII, which the presiding Judge Lucy Koh determined was not appropriate, noting that the device should either be found non-infringing, or should involve a reasonable royalty.
Judge Koh hasn't yet ruled on whether Apple will be able to expand the current damages due to willful infringement, or whether she would allow a sales ban on the infringing GS3 or substantially similar devices, including the GS4 and GS5. Such a ban would have catastrophic consequences for Samsung, even if it were imposed only temporarily.
The same judge decided not to impose a sales ban in the first trial, even after Samsung was found infringing, because she said she had not been convinced that the damage to Apple by the infringement warranted more than monetary damages.
Apple previously won an injunction in a different venue--the U.S. International Trade Commission--over the same Data Detectors patent against HTC, which subsequently struggled with removing the feature throughout 2012 before it decided to instead agree to a licensing agreement with Apple.
Apple was also recently cleared to again argue its Data Detectors patent against Motorola, nearly two years after that parallel case had been delayed by Judge Richard Posner's opinion from the summer of 2012, which dismissed it along with all of other claims Apple and Google had presented.
"We are grateful to the jury and the court for their service," Apple stated to the media. "Today's ruling reinforces what courts around the world have already found: that 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."
Jury to correct infringement royalty error on older Samsung phone
Apple won infringement claims involving both its Slide to Unlock and Apple Data Detectors patents, but lost its arguments involving background sync and Universal Search, the patent it was seeking the highest royalties from, and which involved an indemnification for Samsung by search giant Google.Apple's '172 patent related to text input prediction and spell checking, had already been ruled infringed by Judge Lucy Koh. For that patent, the jury found Samsung willingly infringed Apple's intellectual property.
Vast majority of $120m damages - around $99m - was for '647 patent on quick links #appsung
-- Martyn Williams (@martyn_williams) The three out of five verdict is only a minor win for Apple, but the three patents effectively amount to a $6.40 royalty per unit among the devices found infringing. The majority of the damages were accrued by Samsung's Galaxy SIII flagship, which introduced in May 2012.
Galaxy S3 the big hit, $52 million of the total. No damages for Galaxy tab.
-- Howard Mintz (@hmintz) The jury is being retained to reconsider their decision to award Apple $0 in royalties for the even older Galaxy SII, which the presiding Judge Lucy Koh determined was not appropriate, noting that the device should either be found non-infringing, or should involve a reasonable royalty.
Apple will seek to expand patent infringement win to newer Samsung phones
Apple had earlier sought to also add Samsung's newer, top selling Galaxy S4 to the lawsuit, but was prevented from doing so by Judge Koh due to limited timing. However, both it and its Galaxy S5 predecessor also infringe the data detectors patent, meaning Apple should be able to expand Samsung's total liability.Judge Koh hasn't yet ruled on whether Apple will be able to expand the current damages due to willful infringement, or whether she would allow a sales ban on the infringing GS3 or substantially similar devices, including the GS4 and GS5. Such a ban would have catastrophic consequences for Samsung, even if it were imposed only temporarily.
The same judge decided not to impose a sales ban in the first trial, even after Samsung was found infringing, because she said she had not been convinced that the damage to Apple by the infringement warranted more than monetary damages.
Apple previously won an injunction in a different venue--the U.S. International Trade Commission--over the same Data Detectors patent against HTC, which subsequently struggled with removing the feature throughout 2012 before it decided to instead agree to a licensing agreement with Apple.
Apple was also recently cleared to again argue its Data Detectors patent against Motorola, nearly two years after that parallel case had been delayed by Judge Richard Posner's opinion from the summer of 2012, which dismissed it along with all of other claims Apple and Google had presented.
Comments
Can't we all just get along? and deliver better products?
Apple blew it by not going after Schmidt and Google directly. They are the real pirates here.
Dilger will short-circuit upon reading about this.
I find this verdict disappointing, but look forward to the appeal. At the very least, it was largely a victory for Apple.
Are
Are they (Apple) able to appeal?
Yes.
Can't we all just get along? and deliver better products?
Apple blew it by not going after Schmidt and Google directly. They are the real pirates here.
Google has only lost money on Android. Why would Apple go after Google for damages?
Samsung made billions, and Apple wanted to besmirch its "next big thing" hubris.
Now Apple has won two landmark cases, and has a portfolio of patents it can use to leverage licensing agreements.
It's not like Apple needs revenue from anyone over legal action. It just earned +$10B in quarterly profits.
Isn't willful abuse subject to triple damages? isn't that how Apple got to nearly a billion the first time? Didn't they have to have a damages trial to figure that part out?
Yes subject to triple. No, the billion previously given was without any addition for willfull - could have been $3bill
What portfolio? You mean those design patents in the first case that has nothing to do with core android and which only dealt with Samsung skin in android and nothing else? Apple can't sue Sony, lg, with its designed patents. What made that case was the Samsung documents. That first case had nothing to do with android.
This case apple had 3 patents with real teeth. Data links, background scan, and universal search. Only data linking survived. And that patent with a combination of it about to expire, court rullings stripping it if its value, and it being challenged it close to useless.
This patent war has done nothing to stop android. And this last case was a disaster for apple.
There is nothing apple can threaten android OEMS with. First case only applied specifically to Samsung, and this case really showed how weak apple patents are. Not to mention outside the U.S Apple has even more worthless patents.
Stop reaching ded
What portfolio? You mean those design patents in the first case that has nothing to do with core android and which only dealt with Samsung skin in android and nothing else? Apple can't sue Sony, lg, with its designed patents. What made that case was the Samsung documents. That first case had nothing to do with android.
This case apple had 3 patents with real teeth. Data links, background scan, and universal search. Only data linking survived. And that patent with a combination of it about to expire, court rullings stripping it if its value, and it being challenged it close to useless.
This patent war has done nothing to stop android. And this last case was a disaster for apple.
There is nothing apple can threaten android OEMS with. First case only applied specifically to Samsung, and this case really showed how weak apple patents are. Not to mention outside the U.S Apple has even more worthless patents.
Stop reaching ded
Spot on. Further to this, and the whole "Google losing money on Android" line.. it doesn't take much to see Google's strategy; give out Android for free, gain significant market share whilst revenue is supported by other streams then finally refine the product to increase ad revenue without sacrificing useability. Google's strategy is working to a tee. Further more, the ad revenue from iOS is again mostly from web surfing - lot of these ad's pay Google, not Apple.
Google has only lost money on Android. Why would Apple go after Google for damages?
Samsung made billions, and Apple wanted to besmirch its "next big thing" hubris.
Now Apple has won two landmark cases, and has a portfolio of patents it can use to leverage licensing agreements.
It's not like Apple needs revenue from anyone over legal action. It just earned +$10B in quarterly profits.
Really? And what's a Samsung product without Android?
Google has only lost money on Android. Why would Apple go after Google for damages?
Samsung made billions, and Apple wanted to besmirch its "next big thing" hubris.
Now Apple has won two landmark cases, and has a portfolio of patents it can use to leverage licensing agreements.
It's not like Apple needs revenue from anyone over legal action. It just earned +$10B in quarterly profits.
Damages is calculated on how a measure of how much Apple has lost. The defendant's profit or loss is irrelevant.
Well, in the interest of being complete, Apple began this case with, if I recall correctly, 14 patents it intended to litigate. But the court required both sides to reduce the number of patents for this trial in order to streamline the trial and not unduly burden the jurors with a longer trial. So Apple will be back with the other nine patents, plus others that it held back when deciding on the 14 it intended for this trial.
Next issue. Apple may get triple damages on this trial's award. That's still to be decided. Plus, as DED indicated, it will pursue additional Samsung phone models - ones that sold in higher volumes - now that it has won this round. And finally, the jury needs to go back and make a decision regarding the earlier model DED mentioned. So the base amount could oh up, and up again when extended to cover the S4, etc, and then triple on punitive damages for willful infringement.
Next issue. The award in the first trial was spread across several design patents plus one utility patent. Apple will wait for the appeal to be over and, if it is still victorious, it will then seek damages on those patents for newer models that didn't even exist at the time of the 2012 trial.
Apple is nowhere near done with Samsung on this matter.
What portfolio? You mean those design patents in the first case that has nothing to do with core android and which only dealt with Samsung skin in android and nothing else? Apple can't sue Sony, lg, with its designed patents. What made that case was the Samsung documents. That first case had nothing to do with android.
This case apple had 3 patents with real teeth. Data links, background scan, and universal search. Only data linking survived. And that patent with a combination of it about to expire, court rullings stripping it if its value, and it being challenged it close to useless.
This patent war has done nothing to stop android. And this last case was a disaster for apple.
There is nothing apple can threaten android OEMS with. First case only applied specifically to Samsung, and this case really showed how weak apple patents are. Not to mention outside the U.S Apple has even more worthless patents.
Stop reaching ded
Apple is threatening Android OEMs pretty intensely with its ability to earn $10 billion per quarter, mostly from phones that sell for 3x the average price of what those OEMs can ship at razor thin margins. That's where Apple is competing.
If Apple needs more leverage for forcing Android OEMs to sign licensing agreements, it has dozens of additional patents that it can bring. It hasn't even yet had the opportunity to accuse phones from a year ago on the patents it has already won. It has dozens of patents to bring to court and force Samsung ect. to pay millions of dollars to experts to deny while looking like a scoundrel.
A bigger threat to Android comes from Samsung however, which is stomping on Android OEMs with its marketing muscle and plans to migrate its users off Android as soon as it can.
Damages is calculated on how a measure of how much Apple has lost. The defendant's profit or loss is irrelevant.
Damages are based both on a) lost sales by Apple and b) profits earned through infringement.
A bigger threat to Android comes from Samsung however, which is stomping on Android OEMs with its marketing muscle and plans to migrate its users off Android as soon as it can.
THANK YOU. Someone else who gets that Samsung has been working to ditch Android for a long time. Even Google is shifting away from it.
Spot on. Further to this, and the whole "Google losing money on Android" line.. it doesn't take much to see Google's strategy; give out Android for free, gain significant market share whilst revenue is supported by other streams then finally refine the product to increase ad revenue without sacrificing useability. Google's strategy is working to a tee. Further more, the ad revenue from iOS is again mostly from web surfing - lot of these ad's pay Google, not Apple.
That plan has failed because Android failed to attract a demographic similar to iOS. Sure there is some residual money in advertising to poor people, but the real money is on iOS.
That's why Google aimed its initial Nexus phones directly at iPhone and its Honeycomb tablets 20% above the price of iPad. It thought it had a shot of replicating iOS the way Windows ravaged Macs.
It failed. By 2013 it was trying to introduce free hardware; zero profit Nexus 7 & Moto X and Moto G devices that were priced so low it was losing hundreds of millions of dollars (just in the last six months!) on hardware.
Mobile ads aren't going to subsidize those losses, particularly because Google's mobile efforts are failing.
Google does earn ad revenues from both Android and iOS, but relative to its historical rates from PC web users, it makes nearly nothing.
Apple used to make relatively nothing on hardware sales. But its transition to mobile turned it into the world's largest and most valuable tech company.
Stop moving the goal post we are talking about litigation threats.
Yes Samsung will dump android, like you predicted Google would move off android due to patent issues? Yet all rumors point to Google going full in with android wear, android TV, and android silver.
Ded you reached so hard on that one, I'm shocked your arm didn't fall off.
Great apple can bring more patents. Hopefully they will be stronger than the joke software patents its been using.
Hopefully by 2015-2016 we live in a patent system that treats software patents differently.