With so many different legal battles roaring on between Samsung and Apple, it’s easy to lose track of which court case is which. The one that really stands out from the crowd though is the infamous court decision which awarded Apple a cool $1 billion, with Samsung told to pay up for infringing upon some of Apple’s patents.
Now though, with an appeal already in the pipeline, Apple has been stripped of almost half of that billion dollars after the case’s judge, Lucy Koh, noticed that the damages were calculated incorrectly by the jury involved in the case. Koh has wiped out some of the fee, stating that a new trial will be required in order to calculate the correct amount of money required to change hands.
Koh has effectively wiped $598 million off the figure Samsung was originally ordered to pay Apple after a jury decided that some of Samsung’s devices infringed upon iPhone related patents held by Apple.
According to Koh, the jury calculated the damages based on a system reserved for situations where a design patent has been infringed upon, whereas the case in question revolved around a utility patent. Furthermore, the damages should only have been awarded for product sales after Apple had informed Samsung of its belief that a patent had been infringed upon. Apple argues that a meeting on August 4th 2010 served to fulfill that purpose, but that appears to not be the case.
While the final figure may be lower than first thought, it is important to note that the decision has not changed here: Samsung still has to pay up after infringing upon Apple’s patents and it is merely the amount of money that is due to change hands that Koh is now questioning.
With these latest developments, it’s beginning to become even clearer that we’re destined to be in the middle of a Samsung vs. Apple legal battle until the end of days, or at least until either of the companies in question gets bored.
One thing is for certain though: that’ll be a long, long time after we all got bored of it!
(via TheVerge)
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