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Apple took a $1 billion bite out of Samsung — winning a major face-off with its closest smartphone rival and reasserting its stranglehold on the technology sector.
In a landmark case, a California jury yesterday found Samsung Electronics “willfully” infringed upon six of seven Apple patents for its popular iPad and iPhones.
The blockbuster win grants the Cupertino, Calif., tech giant founded by Steve Jobs a whopping $1.05 billion in damages — and could eventually bar the sale of Samsung’s popular Galaxy smartphones in the US.
However, Apple won less than half of what it sought in damages from the federal court jury, though it may see its award tripled by the judge.
The ruling culminates a month-long court battle pitting two titans of the tech universe against each other. At issue is nothing less than dominance of the $225 billion global smartphone market.
Apple is trying to make permanent a preliminary ban it won on US sales of the Samsung Tab 10.1 and extend it to Samsung smartphones. The judge who presided over the case will consider that issue later.
Samsung, who came away empty-handed in the case, portrayed Apple’s win as a loss for consumers. “It is unfortunate that patent law can be manipulated to give one company a monopoly over rectangles with rounded corners,” it said.
Samsung is expected to appeal.
Key issues before the jury included Apple’s “bounce back” effect when scrolling to the end of a list and the pinch-to-zoom, finger-point gesture.
“This is the best-case scenario Apple could have hoped for,” Brian Love, a Santa Clara Law School professor told Reuters.
Apple’s stock was up as much as 2 percent in after-hours trading after the ruling yesterday.
The verdict delivers a big blow to Samsung, which has emerged as Apple’s fiercest rival. Indeed, Samsung’s Android smartphones shipped more than 40 million phones last quarter, vs. Apple’s 26 million, according to reports.
And the company’s most recent phone, the Samsung Galaxy S-III, generated the sort of buzz that’s typically reserved for iPhone debuts.
According to reports, legal eagles on both sides racked up countless hours, tapping internal e-mails, expert testimony and calling upon alternate designs for the iPhone that had never before been seen.
At one point, Apple’s legal team, headed by Morrison & Foerster and Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr, offered a story about customers returning Samsung Galaxy tablets because they had thought they were from Apple as a way of highlighting the confusion that similar designs can cause.
Samsung’s lawyers, led by Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, argued that Apple’s patents were invalid because earlier gadgets by other designers that never gained hold had features similar to those of Apple products.
The case marks one of six contentious legal battles between Apple and Samsung and other alleged copycat manufacturers.
With Post Wires