Samsung Ordered to Pay Apple $119.6 Million in Patent Case

Apple won a minor victory in its ongoing software patent dispute with Samsung Friday when a federal court jury decided that some Samsung devices infringed on two Apple patents. As a result, Samsung was ordered to pay Apple $119.6 million in damages. However, the jury also found that Samsung did not infringe on two other patents in question, and Apple would not receive the $2.2 billion it was seeking. The jury also awarded Samsung $158,400, the result of Apple infringing on a Samsung patent.

“This amount is less than 10 percent of the amount Apple requested and probably doesn’t surpass by too much the amount Apple spent litigating this case,” said Brian Love, assistant professor at Santa Clara University School of Law, suggesting a victory for Samsung. “Apple launched this litigation campaign years ago with aspirations of slowing the meteoric rise of Android phone manufacturers. It has so far failed to do so, and this case won’t get it any closer.”

Some have suggested that Apple’s argument should actually be with Google and its Android operating system. Samsung may have been successful in convincing the jury that “Apple’s beef here really is with Google,” said University of Notre Dame law professor Mark McKenna. “I think they really feel like they have advanced the ball a little bit there.”

“There’s still a bit of work for the court to do Monday,” reports USA Today. “The jurors must consider another issue and Judge Lucy Koh could adjust the damages. She must officially decide whether any Samsung or Apple products should be taken off the market — an unlikely outcome, McKenna says.”

Samsung is the world’s largest manufacturer of phones running Android, although the company is facing growing competition from Chinese rivals making low-cost handsets. Samsung recently announced that quarterly profits of its mobile division fell year-over-year for the first time since 2010. Meanwhile, Apple’s annual profit dropped in 2013 for the first time in more than a decade.

“In Friday’s verdict, some Samsung devices, including the Galaxy Nexus and the Stratosphere, were found to have infringed Apple patents for ‘data tapping,’ the feature that dials a phone number included in an email,” reports The Wall Street Journal. “Some of Samsung’s products were also found to infringe Apple’s ‘slide to unlock’ patent, which covers the way customers move their finger across a screen to gain access to a device.”

“The two patents Samsung didn’t infringe, according to the jury, were Apple’s patents that covered Siri-style search and another for synchronizing data.”

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