The U.S. court looks to be changing its stance on the Samsung-Apple global patent litigation with Apple with the court acknowledging that Samsung patent infringements were not intentional on Wednesday.
U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh denied Apple’s argument that the $1.05 billion damages award against Samsung from its previous patent infringement trial should be increased.
She found that Samsung’s infringement was not “willful,” denying a new trial and leaving the August jury findings largely untouched.
Koh also rejected Apple’s request that she overrule jurors’ conclusion that Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 did not infringe one patent related to the design of Apple’s iPad. She also turned down Apple’s argument that jurors erred by finding Apple’s trade dress, or how a product looks, for the iPad and iPad 2 wasn’t protectable.
The court, however, rejected Samsung’s request for a new trial.
A Samsung official said that the company did not have an official statement involving the ruling as of press time, stating that it was analyzing the outcomes of the rulings.
“The court will not speculate as to how, precisely, the jury calculated its damages award,” Koh wrote in her ruling. It is “reasonable to assume” that the award is “intended to compensate Apple for losses stemming from all of the violations the jury found.”
Jurors decided Aug. 24 at the end of a trial that Samsung should pay the $1.05 billion for infringing six Apple patents. Apple, which lost its bid to block U.S. sales on 26 of the Galaxy maker’s devices, failed to establish that consumer demand for Samsung products was driven by technology it stole, Koh ruled earlier.
Samsung and Apple, which together make about half of the smartphones sold worldwide, have each scored victories in their patent disputes fought over four continents since Apple accused Asia’s biggest electronics maker of “slavishly copying” its devices. The companies are competing for dominance of a global mobile-device market estimated by Yankee Group at $346 billion this year.
At a Dec. 6 hearing, Koh had said that the original award “is not authorized by the law” on some of the products at issue, and that the jury’s method for calculating damages was potentially flawed.
“If there is enough evidence in the record to justify that damage award then that verdict should be upheld,’ Harold McElhinny, a lawyer for Apple, argued to the judge.
Kathleen Sullivan, a lawyer for Samsung, contended at the hearing that the damages should be reduced by more than $600 million. Sullivan said that while the jury’s calculations were precise, the nine-member panel was hampered by a verdict form that, against Samsung’s wishes, wasn’t ‘‘particularized” enough to permit jurors to properly arrive at damages on a product-by-product basis.
By Cho Ji-hyun and Bloomberg
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sharon@heraldcorp.com)
