Saturday, May 3, 2014

Jury: Samsung infringed on at least 1 Apple patent

A federal jury late Friday ruled Samsung Electronics infringed two of the patents Apple claimed in its landmark patent lawsuit.

But the jury said Samsung phones did not infringe two others, and Apple was awarded just a fraction of the $2.2 billion in damages it was seeking.

FIRST TAKE: In the end, Samsung and Google won

The victory wasn't as clear cut as in 2012 when Apple was awarded nearly $1 billion in damages. Today, the jury awarded Apple $119.6 million in the high-stakes legal battle over software features used in millions of smartphones.

The jury also found Apple infringed one of Samsung's patents, and awarded the Korean company $158,400.

"Today's ruling reinforces what courts around the world have already found: that Samsung willfully stole our ideas and copied our products," Apple spokeswoman Kristin Huguet said in a statement.

The jury of four women and four men began deliberating Tuesday after a month of testimony in the case. It had two full days of deliberation on Wednesday and Thursday.

Apple sought $2.2 billion in damages from Samsung, accusing the company of infringing on its patents to create new Galaxy smartphones and tablet. The features that Samsung unlawfully used, Apple charged, involve word correction, the slide feature to unlock a device, quick links, syncing of programs in the background and universal searching.

Samsung denied the claims and argued Apple should pay more than $6 million for infringing its patents on video features on smartphones — including making video calls over cellular networks, taking videos and sending them via email or text messages — and displaying the number of photos or video files within the photos app.

In his closing argument, lawyer William Price referred to an email from Apple co-founder Steve Jobs indicating that he had ordered employees to wage a "holy war" against Google and its Android system, believing it was a rip-off of Apple's operating system.

Apple lawyer Harold McElhinny told! jurors that Samsung's "illegal strategy has been wildly successful" and insisted that Google had nothing to do with the case.

But Apple attorneys did introduce evidence that it said showed that Google had agreed to reimburse Samsung if the South Korean company were ordered to pay damages on two of the five patents at issue.

Samsung saw its share of the global smartphone market whittled away slightly in the first quarter of 2014, as it dropped from 32.4% to 31.2%, according to Strategy Analytics. Apple gained, up to 17.5% from 15.3%. Samsung shipped 89 million phones during the quarter; Apple shipped 43.7 million.

Contributing: Associated Press

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