You remember the ongoing battle between Samsung and Apple over what does and does not constitute patent infringement? You know, the one that ended with Apple being awarded $1 billion in damages and Samsung left to lick its wounds? Bet you thought that was the end of that, didn’t you?
Well, turns out that Apple’s lawyers have different ideas. Not content with a billion dollars in the bank and inflicting something of a metaphorical black eye on possibly its biggest competitor, Apple’s legal eagles have made a request that many will find somewhat eye watering – Apple wants to force Samsung to hand over an additional $707 million. That’s nearly three quarters of a billion dollars on top of the one billion dollars it has already been awarded. Wowzer.
So what’s this all about? Well, according to Apple’s lawyers, the company wants $535 million for design infringement and $121 million to compensate for Samsung’s earnings whilst the original jury was out deliberating. There’s also and addition $50 million of payment interest on damages through December 31.
Its clear Apple does not see the original decision as the end of the matter here, and Samsung may well find itself having to hand over considerably more than it had expected.
Samsung, for its part, has asked for a retrial and also said that it would add the recently released iPhone 5 to its patent trials in the United States. Could you imagine if the newly crowned smartphone king found itself banned from sale in the United States? No, we can’t either, but stranger things have happened!
The spat between Samsung and Apple has dominated the news for far longer than any of us would have liked, and it shows no sign of going away any time soon. There may never actually be a winner between the two giants, and the real losers may end up being us, the consumers. The real winners however have to be the lawyers involved in the process – we suspect there’s going to be plenty to keep them occupied for quite some time to come!
Oh well, we’ll keep you up to date on proceedings as it all kicks off over the coming weeks, months and probably, years.
(via Reuters)
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