Samsung Ordered To Pay Apple $290M In Patent Case

itwbennett writes "After 3 days of deliberations, a jury has ordered Samsung to pay $290 million to Apple for infringement of several of its patents in multiple Samsung smartphones and tablets. The verdict is the second victory for Apple in its multiyear patent fight against Samsung in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. Last year a jury in the same San Jose courtroom ruled Samsung should pay just over $1 billion for infringement of five Apple patents in multiple Samsung phones and tablets. But afterward, Judge Lucy Koh ordered a new trial to reconsider $450 million of the damages after finding the previous jury had applied an 'impermissible legal theory' to its calculations. Thursday's verdict is the result of that new trial."

Comments

Have you noticed?

[i kan reed]

Have you noticed these summaries never include what the patents are anymore? Samsung didn't even claim they didn't intrude on the patents, just that they made what their market research said was a good idea.

All you have to do is comprehensively patent every element of your design, and if any of it is a good idea, you'll get to sue anyone in the same field.

Re:Have you noticed?

[ackthpt]

Have you noticed these summaries never include what the patents are anymore? Samsung didn't even claim they didn't intrude on the patents, just that they made what their market research said was a good idea.

All you have to do is comprehensively patent every element of your design, and if any of it is a good idea, you'll get to sue anyone in the same field.

It's all a crap-shoot anyway. Odds are Apple holds a patent for something they don't use, but if you develop it independently and roll-out to market, you get shot down because they see you as encrouching on their turf*.

Next up, in a month or two: The reversal.

*everything, everywhere.

Re:Groklaw where art thou?

[i kan reed]

From wikipedia:

On August 20 2013 an article appeared on Groklaw saying it was to be closed down due to government monitoring of the internet, particularly e-mail.[6] Jones wrote "What I do know is it's not possible to be fully human if you are being surveilled 24/7... I hope that makes it clear why I can't continue. There is now no shield from forced exposure."

The NSA scared them out of business.

Thermonuclear war

[Tough Love]

Apple remains obsessed with thermonuclear war instead of introducing products that people want. Meanwhile its market share keeps slip, slip, slipping away.

Re:Thermonuclear war

[amicusNYCL]

Market share is only relevant because Samsung and other Android phone makers have dumped countless cheap worthless phones on the market, and get to claim market share.

Hyperbole aside, another way to state that would be to say that many many people find Apple's price point too high for what they get. You can make a blanket statement to make it seem like all Android phones are cheap and/or worthless, but that is demonstrably untrue. The top 10 smart phone list is a good microcosm of the market in general. The highest ranked phone is the iPhone 5S, and likewise the iPhone is also the single best-selling phone. Out of the other 9 places on the list, 8 of them run Android and 1 is Windows Phone. That sounds about accurate. Out of those 8 Android phones, not a single one can be described as either "cheap" nor "worthless" by anyone without a large anti-Android bias.

yes in fact people really do want their phones and tablets.

Some people do, sure. My mom and dad both use iPhones, in fact they work great for older people. But in this market the iPhone is starting to look like the cookie-cutter option, it is the Toyota Prius of smart phones. The iPhone has lost its status symbol luster, it's no longer the phone that people buy to be seen with like it was during the first couple models. Samsung and HTC phone have replaced the iPhone in that regard. The iPhone is just the phone for people who are already locked into the Apple environment. I have the HTC One, which is second on that top 10 list. My phone has a quad-core 1.7GHz processor, compared with the 5S's dual-core 1.3GHz chip. My phone has twice as much RAM as the 5S. My phone has a larger screen (4.7 in), higher resolution (1920x1080), and higher pixel density (468ppi vs 326ppi) than the 5S. My phone can also stream native HDMI. It is objectively a better device. The only part of the 5S that you might consider to be superior is the software, and that is completely subjective. You might think iOS is fantastic. Quite obviously, a large segment of the market does not agree with you. I was not lamenting the lack of iOS when I paid $600 to buy the One outright.

Re:Thermonuclear war

[Tough Love]

A lot of Apple's product stasis comes down to the idiotic decision (from Jobs?) to go with fixed pixel resolution which really limits their room to manoeuver on screen resolution and aspect. While Android scales everything on the fly, Apple apps have to be recompiled, probably the source code has to change too. To dig out of that mess Apple needs to bite the bullet and go to variable resolution just like Android. But the logistics of doing that are apparently just too scary for pencil pusher Tim Cook.

Look, even Steve Wozniak says this is stupid. I say, totally typical Apple. When Jobs died Apple lost the mojo but kept the hubris.

Tim Cook: wears the turtleneck, but doesn't fill the shoes.

Re:It's not about innovation

[LordLucless]

The patent you're speaking of was a design patent ... and the claim you're referencing was but one of many included in that particular patent...Suggesting that someone was able to patent merely "a rectangle" is a gross mischaracterization of what actually occurred.

Here is the patent in question. Please show me the "many" claims other than the rectangular shape that demonstrate the OPs "gross mischaracterization".