Jury finds Samsung infringed some Apple patents, must pay $120M in damages


Apple also ordered to pay $158K for unintentional infringement of a Samsung patent.

Apple was dealt a blow in its second major patent-infringement lawsuit against Samsung when a Silicon Valley jury awarded the iPhone maker damages of just $119.65 million for Samsung's infringement of several of its smartphone patents.

Apple had requested $2.2 billion in damages for what it alleged was massive infringement of five of its patents by nine models of Samsung smartphones and a single model of tablet.

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But Apple's arguments don't appear to have convinced the jury.

It was only for U.S. Patent 5,946,647, which covers quick links that add contextual menus to items like phone numbers and email addresses, that it found all Samsung products willfully infringed. None of the Samsung devices was found to have infringed Apple's patents on background synchronization of app data and on universal search that pulls in results from the phone and Internet.

The jury delivered a mixed verdict on U.S. Patent 8,046,721, which is the slide-to-unlock motion on phone home screens. A fifth patent, on autocomplete while typing, had already been found to infringe, and the jury was only to calculate a damages award for that one.

Equally stinging for Apple was a decision by the jury that the company's iPhone 4, 4S, and 5 models and the fourth- and fifth-generation iPads infringed a Samsung patent on organizing a mixed gallery of images and video in a digital camera. The jury found Apple's infringement was unintentional.

On this patent, Samsung was awarded just $158,400 in damages from Apple. It had been fighting for just over $6 million -- part of the company's attempt to persuade the jury that patent-infringement awards shouldn't reach into the hundreds of millions or billions of dollars.

The case is the second major patent-infringement action between the two dominant smartphone makers. In a previous case, two juries in the same Silicon Valley court awarded Apple a total of $929 million in damages.

Samsung is expected to appeal the verdict, as it has the previous verdict.

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source : http://www.infoworld.com/d/the-industry-standard/jury-finds-samsung-infringed-some-apple-patents-must-pay-120m-in-damages-241846

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