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Patents The Almighty Buck The Courts Apple

Apple's $1B Patent Award From Samsung Gets Cut By $450M 56

Posted by Soulskill from the snip-snip dept.
New submitter charlesj68 writes with news that U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh has cut Apple's $1.05 billion patent infringement award from Samsung down by $450.5 million. She also said Samsung deserves a new trial over claims related to some of its smartphones. "Koh rejected Apple’s request to enhance the jury’s award, saying the amount Samsung owed was heavily disputed and the jury wasn’t bound to accept either side’s damages estimate. 'It is not the proper role of the court to second-guess the jury’s factual determination as to the proper amount of compensation,' Koh said in her ruling. Apple is entitled to additional damages for sales of infringing products that weren’t considered by the jury, Koh ruled, saying she intends to calculate the amount beginning on Aug. 25, the day after the jury reached its verdict. As the case has been appealed, Koh said she would delay considering evidence of actual post-verdict sales and pre-judgment interest until the appeals are completed."
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Apple's $1B Patent Award From Samsung Gets Cut By $450M More

Apple's $1B Patent Award From Samsung Gets Cut By $450M

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  • Too little, too late (Score:4, Interesting)

    by hyades1 ( 1149581 ) <hyades1@hotmail.com> on Friday March 01, 2013 @05:53PM (#43049577)

    It's been pretty obvious from the start that Koh was in the tank for Apple. I suspect at this point, she's worried about what the appeals court might have to say about her conduct, especially if they can't find grounds to overturn her verdict.

    • It's been pretty obvious from the start that Koh was in the tank for Apple. I suspect at this point, she's worried about what the appeals court might have to say about her conduct, especially if they can't find grounds to overturn her verdict.

      If that was the case, how come shes still practicing law? In other civilized countries we have laws against judges preciding over cases where they have personal stakes in the outcome of the case - She should receive the judicial version of curbstomping if the bolded is correct.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Lisias ( 447563 )

        It's been pretty obvious from the start that Koh was in the tank for Apple. I suspect at this point, she's worried about what the appeals court might have to say about her conduct, especially if they can't find grounds to overturn her verdict.

        If that was the case, how come shes still practicing law? In other civilized countries we have laws against judges preciding over cases where they have personal stakes in the outcome of the case - She should receive the judicial version of curbstomping if the bolded is correct.

        Yep. But on these same civilized countries, one must first file a denounce. The denounce is studied and, if accepted, a lot os legal proceddings (including a trial) is needed before the judge is discharged from his/her duties.

        I don't see no denounce being filed. Yet. But things can change - mainly by the fact that Samsung's case didn't had a very... up to the letter... treatment under this judge's rule.

    • I look forward to compelling evidence of your charges against judge Koh. In the future, you may want to include that with the charge.

      • Check out icebike's comment above. If you were really "looking forward", you wouldn't have much trouble finding the evidence you claim to seek.

    • Re:Too little, too late (Score:5, Interesting)

      by icebike ( 68054 ) on Friday March 01, 2013 @06:48PM (#43050157)

      It's been pretty obvious from the start that Koh was in the tank for Apple. I suspect at this point, she's worried about what the appeals court might have to say about her conduct, especially if they can't find grounds to overturn her verdict.

      I suspect that Koh pretty much handed Samsung grounds for appeal when she ruled the Court has identified an impermissible legal theory on which the jury based its award, and cannot reasonably calculate the amount of excess while effectuating the intent of the jury [groklaw.net]. Groklaw saw this coming from day one.

      Further Groklaw noted months ago that

      The jury appears to have awarded damages for the Galaxy Tab 10.1 LTE infringing — $219,694 worth — but didn't find that it had actually infringed anything

      .

      And of course there was Lucy Koh shooting off her mouth about the Galaxy 10 being in obvious infringement (even imposed an injunction, since lifted), when in fact it was found not to infringe by the jury. Ooops, how embarrassing.

      Koh is probably going to get overturned entirely on this trial. It hasn't even gotten to the appeal stage yet.

  • Sometimes I feel like these patent cases have more in common with a TV drama than a court of law. We already know there is going to be another trial anyway rending all this completely moot. No doubt there will be many more twists and turns to come after that. What makes it even more ridiculous is that the $1B in the first place simply amounted to a small rebate for the money Apple give Samsung to make chips for them.

    And the winners are: the lawyers.
    • Correct. This is not your typical frivolous or meritorious personal injury lawsuit where the plaintiff doesn't pay the barrister unless they win. The only thing better than 11,000 billable hours at the Cadillac Corporate Rate for the first trial? Why, the sequel.

    • Partly true there... but the other part is that she was not prepared for what she had. She saw Apple as most people generally do from the beginning. "Winner" was her presumption. Following the ["what's the point of having a trial at all!?"] trial showed how things were stacked against Samsung, "the evil asian company who couldn't possibly do anything but shamelessly copy honest American companies" AMIRITE? As the trial went on, she began to see things a bit differently. But the Jury foreman made his mi

      • That's an impressive amount of speculation into the judges motivations and thoughts. Do you have anything other than your opinions to back that up?

        • Her behavior, actions and reaction spoke volumes. Yeah sure, it's all speculation even if she were to personally respond to my commentary personally admitting or denying everything I said. But based on what people do, it's not often hard to peice together what motivates a person to have done them.

          At some point, when a thing is so broken that you can't possibly piece it back together with any coherence, you just have to toss it out and get a new one.

        • You can practically see Apple HQ from the roof of the courthouse.

  • Argument against IP laws (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I hope someday people realize that ideas are not scarce goods (queue jokes about common sense). Apple's invention - rounded corners and all - was built on the collective shoulders of all of civilization. Likewise Samsung's ideas built on the same thing - possibly including some ideas put forward by Apple. THIS IS NOT A BAD THING. In fact, what I just describe is exactly how Markets work.

    The sooner we stop treating ideas like real physical property, the better off we will as a society will be. Punish pe

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Kwyj1b0 ( 2757125 )

      No victim, no crime.

      But corporations are people, and rounded corners belong to Apple - clearly if Samsung had used razor-sharp edges on their tablet, people would have bought iPads instead, and so Samsung did steal from Apple.

      This is depressing. On a slightly related note, I'm looking at my (physical) desktop and can't find one single device (including keyboards, monitors, computer cases, etc) without rounded corners.

    • Re:Argument against IP laws (Score:4, Insightful)

      by arbiter1 ( 1204146 ) on Friday March 01, 2013 @06:45PM (#43050109)
      One the biggest issues in this case was use of a double standard. The jury ruled that cause prior art couldn't run on iOS device it wasn't valid prior art. But if you use same logic the iOS patents wouldn't run on Andriod hence no infringement, but they ruled that part didn't matter and found Samsung did infringe. Its what i like to call the Political standard, commonly employed by Obama.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by gnupun ( 752725 )

      The sooner we stop treating ideas like real physical property, the better off we will as a society will be. Punish people for stealing actual things instead of hypothetical customers (lost sales)

      You have it backwards. Physical property is worth less than good ideas (not common ones). What you call actual things are simply = good ideas (design etc) + cheap raw materials + manufacturing machines. As you can see, the most valuable factor in the above equation is "good ideas."

  • So Judge Koh said 'It is not the proper role of the court to second-guess the jury’s factual determination as to the proper amount of compensation,'.

    And then proceeded... to second-guess the jury’s factual determination as to the proper amount of compensation by $450,000,000?

    Am I missing something here? I would prefer to not RTFA if at all possible..

    • Re:Ummm... (Score:4, Informative)

      by DragonWriter ( 970822 ) on Friday March 01, 2013 @06:27PM (#43049903)

      Am I missing something here?

      Yes, you are missing that she didn't second guess the jury's factual determination, she "identified an impermissible legal theory on which the jury based its award".

      There is a difference between matters of law and matters of fact (in a jury trial in the US, the former is the purview of the judge and the latter that of the jury, generally.)

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by oxdas ( 2447598 )

      The jury had some problems with a few phones. In one case, they ordered the phone had not infringed and then later ordered compensation for the phone. In another instance, the breakdown of compensation didn't equal the total compensation awarded (bad math on the part of the jury) and the judge doesn't know which amount they meant. There are probably more, but those are the first two I can remember.

      So, the judge order new trials on all the phones she couldn't figure out what the jury meant or they clearly

  • 450Million would only run the US Government for what, like 2 seconds?

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      About an hour.

      Annual expenditure is $3.8 trillion.

  • It should have been obvious that a new trial was necessary when the foreman said they completely skipped fair use because it was bogging them down. Fair use is a part of the patent system whether they like it or not. You can't just take something from a 50 year old movie and patent it.

  • I don't agree with her decision and she's done too much meddling and wavering. Nobody should be happy with how things have turned out. And after all, isn't that's what compromise is about -- disappointing both parties.

  • Something that damages any corporation and puts their stockpiles of money back into circulation into the general economy is a good thing. Lawyers are the natural parasites that feed on money and therefore this is the natural order of things. In a perfect world I would say that they should concentrate on innovation and develop new and improved products. It's not a perfect world, so this is just fine. Let them spend years and years raking over the same coals, appealing, getting injunctions and so on, all the

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