Court overturns Apple's $120M patent win against Samsung

Posted:
in General Discussion
Samsung saw a major victory in its ongoing patent infringement litigation with Apple, as a U.S. appeals court overturned a $120 million decision against the South Korean electronics maker.




In the original jury decision handed down in May of 2014, both Samsung and Apple were found to have infringed on each others' patents. But Samsung was still ordered to pay $119.6 million in damages to Apple for violating three patents.

That was undone by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Friday, according to Reuters. The Washington, D.C.-based court found that Samsung did not infringe on an Apple patent related to data detectors, and also ruled invalid a pair of Apple patents related to "slide to unlock" and autocorrect.

Samsung and Apple argued before the appeals court in January, with the bulk of the discussion around Apple's data detectors patent. That invention accounted for more than $98 million of the now-defunct damages that had been awarded to Apple.

Apple had originally asked the court for more than $2 billion after alleging Samsung infringed on five patents -- including swipe-to-text, universal search, and data detectors -- while a Samsung counterargument sought just over $6 million for two patents of its own.

The ongoing dispute is one of a number of lawsuits that remain between the smartphone rivals. In December, in a separate complaint, Samsung agreed to pay Apple some $548 million for infringing on a different set of patents.
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 67
    Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?
    magman1979doozydozenhorvaticcornchipwetlanderargonaut
  • Reply 2 of 67
    apple ][apple ][ Posts: 9,233member
    Not surprising. I can't say that I'm surprised at all.
    pscooter63cornchip
  • Reply 3 of 67
    ceek74ceek74 Posts: 324member
    I'd really like to see how much money Samsung is paying to various judges.  Not that something like that is actually happening.
    palominemagman1979frankiehorvaticcalicornchipjony0
  • Reply 4 of 67
    What happened to "and boy, have we patented it"?
    elijahgwonkothesaneanantksundaramcalicornchipargonautbrakkenjustbobfjony0
  • Reply 5 of 67
    jungmarkjungmark Posts: 6,926member
    The FBI/ DOJ have long reaches. Basically it's ok to steal from Apple and force them to write a less secure OS. 
    palominefotoformatmagman1979civaSir_Turkeydoozydozenmelodyof1974mwhitecalicornchip
  • Reply 6 of 67
    realisticrealistic Posts: 1,154member
    Why bother trying to innovate when the courts won't allow you to protect the patents with judgements.
    magman1979horvaticcalicornchipthepixeldocargonautjustbobfjony0colinng
  • Reply 7 of 67
    the first shot at Apple for not rolling over for the FBI
    magman1979civaSir_Turkeyradster360equality72521mwhitecaliwetlanderargonautzeus423
  • Reply 8 of 67
    dasanman69dasanman69 Posts: 13,002member
    Cue up the gnashing of teeth. 
  • Reply 9 of 67
    Please, Tim. Perform a corporate inversion, relocate to Ireland and compete in the US with all of the unreasonable advantages foreign competitors have. Apple is not welcome here anymore.
    edited February 2016 londoricoco3magman1979civapalomineradster360anantksundaramdoozydozenteejay2012mwhite
  • Reply 10 of 67
    snovasnova Posts: 1,281member
    Please, Tim. Perform a corporate inversion, relocate to Ireland and compete in the US with all of the unreasonable advantages foreign competitors have. Apple is not welcome here anymore.
    Every joke has some truth to it.
    icoco3doozydozencornchip
  • Reply 11 of 67
    We are all beginning to wonder how far law enforcement can reach in this privacy debate. It's honestly starting to look like they may even have some reach on the stock exchanges also. How is it possible to do that? Apple needs to spend more lobbying congress like the rest of tech does and they need some voice over on the stock exchanges as well. That is not what a straightforward company like them wants to ever do, but it is necessary now. Look at Amazon and Google, they both have people at the top who are well connected with Wall Street. Seriously, it's astonishing how the price of this stock moves, or lately--hardly moves at all. It's like there is a big ol clamp on AAPL. To the others here, what's your paranoid theory on AAPL?
    civadoozydozencalicornchipbrakkenbadmonk
  • Reply 12 of 67
    Not surprised.

    I dread to think Apple has spent on legal fees to date around this nonsense.  And if they thought it would improve their image as an IP innovator would off-set the cost, I'm not sure that has even worked. 
    cornchiprogifan_old
  • Reply 13 of 67
    realistic said:
    Why bother trying to innovate when the courts won't allow you to protect the patents with judgements.
    I am sure that the many companies whose IP that Apple has infringed upon feel the same way. You had Apple versus the University of Wisconsin over architecture design. Then Apple versus Ericsson over 2G/4G tech (which Apple settled a couple of months ago out of court). Now you have Apple being sued by Immersion over force touch. The common thread in all 3 cases: these companies entered into licensing agreements with other companies who use their tech - including Samsung by the way - but Apple refused to do so until they were sued (in the case of Ericsson) or when they were forced to by court order as a result of the lawsuit (i.e. the University of Wisconsin). Apple's real strategy wasn't to enforce IP. It was to intimidate OEMs from making and selling Android devices. If going after alleged infringement was their goal, they would have sued Google for inventing and marketing Android in the first place. They never did and never will. Instead, Apple was saber-rattling; trying to use their lawsuit against Samsung as a way to force Android OEMs into licensing agreements that would eliminate their profit margin. At one point they were demanding that Android device makers pay them $35 per device! Microsoft - back when Ballmer was running things - piled on too, figuring that if they could get OEMs to abandon Android, those OEMs would have no choice but to make Windows Mobile phones and tablets if they wanted to stay in the mobile devices business. Curious: Apple went from being a hated, sworn enemy of Microsoft in the 1990s and 2000s to being very willing to benefit Microsoft by joining in the efforts to crush Google. Even though the result would have been Microsoft being #1 in desktop/PC market share, #1 in enterprise, #1 in mobile market share, #2 in console gaming, and with a growing Internet/search/cloud services platform ... even bigger and more powerful than they were during their Wintel heyday. And it seems like Apple would have been perfectly fine with that, despite how terrible it would have been for the economy, innovation, tech in general. Again, curious indeed.
    wdowellcnocbui
  • Reply 14 of 67
    snova said:
    Please, Tim. Perform a corporate inversion, relocate to Ireland and compete in the US with all of the unreasonable advantages foreign competitors have. Apple is not welcome here anymore.
    Every joke has some truth to it.
    Except in this case I'm not joking.
    anantksundarammwhitecalibrakkencolinng
  • Reply 15 of 67
    elijahgelijahg Posts: 2,753member
    I'd like to know why genuine IP holders like Apple lose so routinely compared to patent trolls, who seem to win no matter who they're attacking 
    magman1979palominelondorpaxmanbrakkencopelandcolinng
  • Reply 16 of 67
    ruled invalid a pair of Apple patents related to "slide to unlock" and autocorrect.
    What does this really mean, that the original patient was not granted properly? They never had it?
    justbobf
  • Reply 17 of 67
    ceek74 said:
    I'd really like to see how much money Samsung is paying to various judges.  Not that something like that is actually happening.
    I don't think the judges were paid at all...they probably had their orders originate much closer to home....most likely right down the street.
    mwhiteargonautcopeland
  • Reply 18 of 67

    realistic said:
    Why bother trying to innovate when the courts won't allow you to protect the patents with judgements.
    I think this ruling comes from higher up than the courts. Punishment as I see it. Lets reward the South Korean company who probably already has back doors on everyone of their phones.
    palominelondormwhitecornchipargonautcopelandjony0colinng
  • Reply 19 of 67
    Government and US courts playing dirty politics. I am not surprised either. I am sure Apple is not going to worry about couple hundred millions. Do they think Apple will buckle and given them their GovOS? Government is now acting like a spoiled rotten kid.
    londorbloggerblogmwhitewetlanderargonautcopelandjony0colinng
  • Reply 20 of 67
    gatorguygatorguy Posts: 24,176member
    rbonner said:
    ruled invalid a pair of Apple patents related to "slide to unlock" and autocorrect.
    What does this really mean, that the original patient was not granted properly? They never had it?
    It means the patent claims Apple used in this case should not have been granted to begin with by the USPTO.

    I wouldn't necessarily fault the patent office entirely as there's a lot of pressure from patentee's to grant the applications, with modification after modification from applicants if the original wording doesn't pass muster. With hundreds of thousands of existing claims and patents to deal with it's to be expected that they miss some of them. Until the spotlight is shown on some particular granted patent used in a lawsuit the invalidity of some specific claim may not be obvious.
    edited February 2016 singularityhorvaticcash907censoredcnocbuijony0
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