One billion dollars – that’s how much Samsung was ordered to pay Apple back in August after a Californian jury found Samsung had infringed some of Apple’s patents. Except, according to a court ruling today, the jury made a slight miscalculation. A miscalculation to the tune of $450 million ($450,514,650 to be exact).
The court found that members of the jury over calculated the damages that should have been awarded to Apple when it was assessing whether Samsung had copied key features from Apple’s iPhone and iPad devices for its own Galaxy range of smartphones and tablets.
While the court re-assessed the damages it didn’t overturn the jury’s findings that Samsung had infringed some of Apple’s patents.
Samsung says that it is “pleased with the court’s decision”, although it is still required to pay Apple a significant sum. With the new ruling Samsung still has to pay Apple over $599 million, although this probably won’t be the final figure.
Since nearly half of the jury’s award to Apple was struck out, a new jury will be tasked with deciding what Samsung should actually pay. With a new trial being tasked with deciding the final figure the two companies will be back in court, which means more money will be going to lawyers and potentially more money passing to Apple. Should Samsung choose to appeal the court’s ruling we could see the tab increasing even further.
Or, perhaps not.
Samsung is still pursuing its own legal efforts to get the case thrown out of court. The company is arguing that Apple should not have been granted many of the patents in question.
So with half the award thrown out by the court and Samsung arguing to have the entire case dismissed we’re now approaching the second anniversary of Apple v Samsung with little sign that the two can come to some agreement.
