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The Courts Businesses Patents The Almighty Buck United States Apple Hardware Technology

Samsung Must Pay Apple $539 Million For Infringing iPhone Design Patents, Jury Finds (cnet.com) 143

Posted by BeauHD from the never-ending-disputes dept.
Samsung must pay Apple $539 million for infringing five patents with Android phones it sold in 2010 and 2011, a jury has found in a legal fight that dates back seven years. "The unanimous decision, in the U.S. District Court in San Jose in the heart of Silicon Valley, is just about halfway between what the two largest mobile phone makers had sought in a high-profile case that reaches back to 2011," reports CNET. From the report: The bulk of the damages payment, $533,316,606, was for infringing three Apple design patents. The remaining $5,325,050 was for infringing two utility patents. Samsung already had been found to infringe the patents, but this trial determined some of the damages. The jury's rationale isn't clear, but the figure is high enough to help cement the importance of design patents in the tech industry. Even though they only describe cosmetic elements of a product, they clearly can have a lot of value.

Samsung showed its displeasure and indicated the fight isn't over. "Today's decision flies in the face of a unanimous Supreme Court ruling in favor of Samsung on the scope of design patent damages. We will consider all options to obtain an outcome that does not hinder creativity and fair competition for all companies and consumers," Samsung said.
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Samsung Must Pay Apple $539 Million For Infringing iPhone Design Patents, Jury Finds More

Samsung Must Pay Apple $539 Million For Infringing iPhone Design Patents, Jury Finds

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  • What'd they expect?

    Apple's basically going to make them fight this one all the way up the chain.

    • Re:Court in Apple's back yard? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 24, 2018 @09:59PM (#56670570)

      They already fought it all the way up the chain. The Supreme Court overturned a previous award of $399M and sent it back to the lower court for re-adjudication, because they agreed with Samsung that the 3 design patents for minor little details like rounded corners, a screen that takes up most of the front face, and a shiny black finish were not a substantial enough part of the overall product that Apple should be entitled to their entire profits under a 19th century law intended to protect the designs of ornaments with very simple functional purpose and deriving most of their value from their ornamental design. And now the home jury decides to punish Samsung further for daring to ask for fairness in the award amount by raising it beyond the total amount of profit.

      Watching on from the other side of the world, it is sad to see America reduced to tribalism in their political and judicial decision making like this. Everything has become about supporting the home team, and sticking it hard to the opposition.

      • Re: Favoritism (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        I have observed (tech, pharma, oil, steel, agri..) American courts are favouring home companies with govt too eager to support cases. Fair trade rules are becoming a myth in land of freedom.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          The same can be said about courts in other countries. They usual favor companies from their own back yard.

          But if you want to know how badly Samsung copied the iPhone take a look at the multiple times Apple won against Samsung in South Korea.

          Samsung is known for cloning everything and they don't even try to hide it. Just ask LG .... every time they build something new, Samsung would clone it and sell it with plastic parts. Ever wonder why Samsung's (garbage) washer and dryers look almost identical to

          • you are making some huge claims, I am not disputing, asking just to increase my knowledge, can you give me proof as to which other countries extort 100+ million dollars over look and button placement?

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by jrumney ( 197329 )
            That Samsung copied Apple is no longer in dispute. The court has ruled that they did on these 3 design patents and 2 utility patents (I don't remember how many patents Apple originally claimed they had infringed) and Samsung has already exhausted or given up its appeals on that. The question now is how much is Apple entitled to for that infringement. For the two utility patents, there seems to be no dispute that $5M is the right ballpark, but for the 3 design patents - 1. a shiny blank rounded rectangle

            • Re: (Score:3)

              by shmlco ( 594907 )

              All designs are the sum of their individual elements. The thing is, when you hold up item A and item B and you can't tell them apart, it starts to become fairly obvious that one copied the other. Especially when internal memos back up those claims.

        • I have observed (tech, pharma, oil, steel, agri..) American courts are favouring home companies with govt too eager to support cases. Fair trade rules are becoming a myth in land of freedom.

          I have observed that American juries don't like companies who keep objecting to verdicts abd force a retrial in the hope that the winner will lose interest and they will get away scot-free. I'm not the only one who has observed that Samsung used that tactic for decades.

      • I'm not even american, I've never owned an iPhone nor do I plan on getting one, but that's a pretty gross mis-characterization of the design patent in question.

        The patent contains multiple drawings ranging in detail from very abstract ones like the "rounded rectangles" one that quite often gets thrown around to ones that present the design of the iPhone is great detail with exact proportions. Apple being able to show that they copies what was described in the detailed drawings with very high accuracy pro

      • They already fought it all the way up the chain. The Supreme Court overturned a previous award of $399M and sent it back to the lower court for re-adjudication, because they agreed with Samsung that the 3 design patents for minor little details like rounded corners, a screen that takes up most of the front face, and a shiny black finish were not a substantial enough part of the overall product that Apple should be entitled to their entire profits under a 19th century law intended to protect the designs of ornaments with very simple functional purpose and deriving most of their value from their ornamental design.

        And the jury decided that the parts apart from everything handled by these patents are only worth a few dozens of dollars fromthe selling price of several hundred, so the rest must be the worth of these patents. Case closed.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by asylumx ( 881307 )

        Watching on from the other side of the world, it is sad to see America reduced to tribalism in their political and judicial decision making like this. Everything has become about supporting the home team, and sticking it hard to the opposition.

        It's sad to see from within America, too. Politics is not sports, stop acting like it is!

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • The look and feel lawsuit was settled decades ago.

      Apple lost.

      • The look and feel lawsuit was settled decades ago.

        Apple lost.

        What about the two Utility Patent Infringements?

        Nothing to do with Look and Feel, dickhead!

        • If you knew you had a point, you wouldn't feel the need to insult the person you are talking too.

          • If you knew you had a point, you wouldn't feel the need to insult the person you are talking too.

            Wrong.

            I just get frustrated with all the Willful Blindness around here.

            So, what about the Utility Patent infringements? Or don't you want to address the real point of my argument? That's like blowing-off a completely relevant and well-supported comment because someone used an apostrophe incorrectly.

            I've seen it again and again, most recently in your post, above. So watch that log in your eye when you are complaining about the dust-mote in mine.

            • Let me quote the article :

              The bulk of the damages payment, $533,316,606, was for infringing three Apple design patents. The remaining $5,325,050 was for infringing two utility patents.

              As I said, you don't have a point, and you know it. That's why you are using insults and other fallacies.

              • Let me quote the article :

                The bulk of the damages payment, $533,316,606, was for infringing three Apple design patents. The remaining $5,325,050 was for infringing two utility patents.

                As I said, you don't have a point, and you know it. That's why you are using insults and other fallacies.

                And you don't have an argument. That's why you won't rebut mine.

                • You asked a question ("What about the two Utility Patent Infringements?"), and you used insults. You never presented any kind of argument. Maybe you have one in your head, but I'm not a mind reader.

                  From my part, I just made the argument that your question was pretty much irrelevant to the subject, as it's only 1% of the amount Samsung has to pay.

      • The look and feel lawsuit was settled decades ago.

        Apple lost.

        Because the judge decided that the agreement between Apple and Microsoft that allowed Microsoft to use Apple's GUI in their programs written for Macs also allowed the to use the GUI in Windows.

  • Juche. Go full Korean. Clamshell all the way.

  • Design Patent isn't a Patent (Score:5, Interesting)

    by gordguide ( 307383 ) on Thursday May 24, 2018 @11:24PM (#56670876)

    For some unknown reason, probably dating back to the creation of the USPTO, in the United States an Industrial Design (a form of IP) is, uniquely, referred to as a Design "Patent", even though it's not a patent but instead describes some aspect of a product or item's appearance. For example if you try to copy a Ferrari you will be infringing on the Industrial Design (Design Patent in the US), not on some functional mechanism.

    One rather famous Design Patent is for the Q-Ray Bracelet, which covers the shape of the bracelet itself, but in advertising it's implied that there is a "Patent" on it's function as a healing device. There isn't.

    Every other nation on Earth refers to this form of IP as a (registered) Industrial Design.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mentil ( 1748130 )

      Design patents sound like trademark to me, are you suggesting that the same standard should apply? I.e. if it wouldn't confuse an average consumer, then it's not infringing?

      • Re:Design Patent isn't a Patent (Score:4, Informative)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 ) <slashdot&worf,net> on Friday May 25, 2018 @03:29AM (#56671470)

        Design patents sound like trademark to me, are you suggesting that the same standard should apply? I.e. if it wouldn't confuse an average consumer, then it's not infringing?

        No, they aren't trademarks. Design patents are different in several ways. First, is the limited time nature - a trademark can last forever (if you keep using it, but a design patent lasts 5 years.

        Second, a trademark is infringed by similarity, whereas a design patent is infringed if you implement everything.

        You use trademarks if you plan on using a design element or word or sound for a long time consistently. If it's something you plan on using for one item, you do a design patent.

        The "rounded corners" patent is a design patent - to violate it, you must have the following things - a device with rounded corners, a screen with a grid of icons, part of that grid of icons has a static collection of icons across pages of the grid. No Android phone (other than Samsung) had those features - rounded corners yes, grid of icons yes, but no static tray of icons as well. The Android home screen has a static tray of icons, but it lacks a grid of icons, because it has widgets (the clock is prominent on the home screen for a reason). The Android app launcher has a grid of icons, but it lacks the static tray of icons.

        Just those little element tweaks mean generic Android never violated the patents. But TouchWiz did - other than the actual icons themselves (which weren't part of the patents), Samsung made their app launcher look just like iOS complete with static track, row of dots in the middle showing current page , etc.

        I remember seeing back around the time some company was advertising a "free iPod" with purchase of one of their computers. The 'iPod" was a third party clone of the iPod Mini, and within a week, those ads were gone. For about a year or two - they came back, presumably because the patent expired and it was legal to sell an MP3 player that looked like an old iPod.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mentil ( 1748130 )

          Thanks, guess that explains why cars get redesigned aesthetics every 5 years or so. I'm wondering why clothing fashions don't get design patents, then.
          The lesson to Samsung is that they should've stuck with stock Android :P

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by hawk ( 1151 )

            That's not it for cars, as much sense as it makes.

            Model/brand sales spike after a redesign, and drop over the next couple/few years. Make a new look, and sales go up again, sell for a couple of years, repeat.

            hawk

  • Much-needed kick in the backside (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Samsung needs to up its game and stop shamelessly copying. Apple's way of doing things isn't the only option – we need some new life in the marketplace.

  • The German manufacturer, Braun might like a word if it still had an independent existence. Dieter Rams their industrial designer was an inspiration to Jony Ive and in particular the rectangular device and display with rounded edges. If you have a display with rounded edges, then rounded icons are a an obvious extension.

    • The German manufacturer, Braun might like a word if it still had an independent existence. Dieter Rams their industrial designer was an inspiration to Jony Ive and in particular the rectangular device and display with rounded edges. If you have a display with rounded edges, then rounded icons are a an obvious extension.

      Yawn. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/te... [telegraph.co.uk]

      Dieter Rams on Apple

      I have always regarded Apple products – and the kind words Jony Ive has said about me and my work – as a compliment. Without doubt there are few companies in the world that genuinely understand and practise the power of good design in their products and their businesses.

      https://www.macrumors.com/2016... [macrumors.com]

      Dieter Rams and Over 100 Top Designers Support Apple in Longstanding Samsung Lawsuit

  • Especially as I could find prior art for ALL of Apple's claim. Except perhaps the claim of providing only a single button. But even then, gee....I mean yes, Macs for years had only one button. It was annoying then, and it's annoying now..

  • Winners=Lawyers, Loosers Customers (Score:3)

    by Stan92057 ( 737634 ) on Friday May 25, 2018 @01:03PM (#56674514)
    Honestly dont see how a box shape for a cellphone wouldn't be obvious. but as my subject line says.....

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