Paul Morris on October 8, 2016, 9:19 pm

Apple Wins Appeal, Awarded $119.6M From Samsung In Slide-To-Unlock Patent Infringement Case

It has been a long time since the Apple versus Samsung patent case has been mentioned in any shape or form, but given Samsung’s current run of bad luck, bringing it up now was unlikely to involve a positive outcome for the South Korean company.

With that in mind, The United States Court of Appeals, which looks into cases that have been appealed via the Federal Circuit, has ruled in favor of Apple by reinstating a previous judgement that had awarded Tim Cook’s company $119.6 million in damages in the longstanding patent case between the two businesses.

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When we say longstanding, we genuinely mean longstanding as this case dates back to 2011 when Apple and Samsung went head-to-head over an accusation that Samsung had infringed on a number of patents that Apple held against its slide-to-unlock feature, as well as things like auto-correct and an auto detection feature that recognized phone numbers in text as hyperlink to make calling easier.

Apple was awarded extensive damages in that case, which incidentally was totally separate to the legal action taken against certain older-generation Galaxy devices.

The majority of that money awarded, a total of $98.7 million, was for the detection patent, which will enrage Samsung due to the initial rulings which said that particular patent wasn’t infringed.

The litigation and appeal of decisions isn’t over, either. An appeal court is still planning on discussing the second Apple versus Samsung case that also dates back five years. Samsung had originally been ordered to pay Apple $548 million for creating devices that basically copied the look and feel of the iPhone.

A number of high profile designers, such as Calvin Klein and Dieter Rams, have come out in support of Apple via an amicus brief filed with the courts, claiming that a product’s visual design has “powerful effects” on the human mind, and greatly affects the decision making progress. There’ll be more to come on this one.