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Judge Koh Rules: Samsung Did Not Willfully Infringe
sfcrazy writes "In a nutshell there won't be a new trial in the Apple V. Samsung case, as Samsung wanted, because the judge thinks that the trial was fair despite allegations that the jury foreman could have been biased. She also ruled that there won't be any more money for Apple as the iPhone maker failed to prove they were 'undercompensated' by the jury. The most important ruling was that she found that 'Samsung did not willfully infringe.'"
With this ruling neither side are going to be happy (and frankly it's somewhat self-contradictory as well)...
Both sides will be writing up appeals no doubt so this story is far from over yet - it'll be very interesting to hear what gets presented to the higher court and what their take on the foreman is.
Seeking treble damages is SOP for these kinds of suits. You do it because you have a reasonable chance of succeeding and there is no penalty for the attempt.
Anyway, don't be quick to jump to Samsung's defense because they're on the other end of Apple in this suit, or because they make your favorite smartphone. Samsung pretty much owns the SK govt and aggressively attacks its overseas competitors in every manner you could imagine. There are plenty of blogs detailing Samsung's domestic abuses of power (That far predate any smartphone). Samsung isn't a friendly company and they aren't looking out for you. Like any company, they just want your money.
If I'm not mistaken Apple will have to pay California income tax on the money they get from Samsung. With a corporate tax of nearly 9% that'd be close to $90M added to the coffers. If one was into conspiracy theories this would be an interesting avenue to pursue.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
Judge Koh knew that she has seriously fcuked up in the original trial.
This second round ruling - that Samsung does not "willfully" infringe on Apple's patents - is nothing less than a face saving move.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
From the summary:
She also ruled that there won't be any more money for Apple
From the article:
So, Samsung owes Apple US $1 billion for a non will ful infringement.
"More" in this case would be $3B as da,ages may be tripled for willful infringement.
You're right, they'd never miss $90M, even with them running a deficit for several years end-on-end. If they're fortunate and their forecast comes through for 2013, they'll just barely squeak into the black. I wonder if that forecast included this little windfall...
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
General feelings from the Apple side is that this is unfortunate but would rather Apple stop wasting time on it. General opinion from the Samsung/Android side is, **** Apple, waste as much money as possible.
This had *nothing* to do with feelings. Apple is unable to maintain its massive mark-ups of rebadged foxconn phones through innovation; its massive market share gone; the days of the iPhone killer long behind us; its marketing machine pushing it as the *one* phone turning on Apple. When Jobs went thermonuclear on Android he should have been spending money on diverse product lines; Company acquisitions....hell competed on price, but instead he deicide to *litigate* over a few interface patents on devices covered by thousands of patents, often shared at little or no cost between traditional phone manufactures.
This court case was a massive win for Apple, but without product bans...toothless. I suspect even with them there are simply too many compelling Android phones; from a diverse collection of manufactures. All with an Mountain!? of there own patents [Hell even Google has them now]...Apple is terrified of them forming a cartel.
The bottom line is this is nothing to do with feelings this is everything about poor corporate strategy.
Yes, you're right, theft is theft. But theft is also completely unrelated to this case as no theft is even alleged to have happened.
This case is not about theft, it's about patent infringment. Something not in any way related to depriving someone of their physical property.
No. Because she doesn't find her jury foreman to be a disturbing failure of vor dire. It's a patent case and he's a wannabe patent troll. If she doesn't find that problematic, one wonders what it would take.
A "disturbing failure of voir dire" means "Samsung's lawyers failed to ask relevant questions of the jury, failed to investigate the jurors, and failed to look through their own records of who they've sued in the past"... or really, it means Samsung absolutely knew who Hogan was and held the past conflict in check in case the jury decided against them. Who are we kidding - if the jury had decided for Samsung on every count, would they be demanding a new trial because of Hogan's past? Of course not. Since they had every opportunity to investigate that past and likely knew of it, they can't play "ace up our sleeve" and spring it on the court post-judgement. Trials only work like that in the movies.
One very important sentence in the groklaw article:
Am I reading this correctly? Apple has invalid patents but still got damages out of them? Does this mean they are a one-shot deal and that other manufacturers can infringe now? In this case 1 billion dollars to render Apple's portfolio irrelevant was effectively very cheap, given the size of the relevant market.
[cough]iPhone snags its highest U.S. market share ever[/cough]
https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS23916413#.UQte-5G3PGg *Worldwide* Q4 post earning release from a real market analyst. However you spin it Apples share of the pie is shrinking. In Larger markets than the US like China Apple have no market share...and don't have a competitive product in that market. You should reread my post, its pretty good.
Samsung was manufacturing real products and not using litigation as a business method until Apple started the legal war.
Couldn't agree more. I'm posting anonymously for reasons that will become obvious below...
I work for a direct competitor of Samsung in a different space to smartphones. Samsung is a relative newcomer in our market, and are comparatively tiny compared to the big players (such as my employer, one of the "big 5" in our industry).
Right now, we're shitting our pants over them. Their product is half the price of ours and around 3/4 the quality. They'll bump the quality up to ours or higher and easily keep their price below. I KNOW they can do this, because they manufacture a lot of the components that we have to buy; and can integrate their technologies much more fluidly than we can.
Our management are looking at all kinds of legal ways to try to fight them, including digging through our patents to figure out what we can sue them for. The simple fact of the matter is, they've got a product that WILL be better than ours and instead of improving our devices to stay ahead, we want to try to squash them down before they become too big.
I'm seriously considering looking in to employment at Samsung in the coming years...
how he was a) a wannabe patent troll
I'm not the original poster, so can't comment on this. I would just say more generally that he was a possible patent enforcer
how b) that makes a damned bit of difference either way to the case
He has a vested interest on patent infringement damages being awarded regardless of the content of the patent. In this concrete case he manipulated the jury to disregard the instructions to consider the validity of the patents. It's like having an insurance company owner deciding on a case of insurance coverage.
c) what exactly the judge is supposed to do about it even if he was?
The judge could have annulled the jury decision based on them not following the jury instructions and she could have sent them back to do their work properly.
The relevant questions were asked of the jury. Hogan gave misleading answers to those questions.
If the jury had found for Samsung on every point, despite Hogan's possible bias against Samsung and their position, of course there wouldn't be a basis to demand a new trial. A better question might be whether Apple would be demanding a new trial had an anti-Apple zealot made it onto the jury by concealing their past history with Apple and then browbeating the other jurors into ignoring and misinterpreting law in a way that favoured Samsung.
And I think we all know the answer to that one.
++ Say to Elrond "Hello.".
Elrond says "No.". Elrond gives you some lunch.