Samsung and Apple have had legal disputes for the better part of this decade and things don’t seem to be ending anytime soon. A design patent case that was originally awarded to Apple for a sum of $1 billion back in 2012 is now going back to court as Samsung has been granted a retrial. The decision was made yesterday by Judge Lucy Koh of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California leaving the two companies until October 25th to agree to a date for the retrial.
When Apple released the iPhone, they believe they have the rights to certain designs that make up a smartphone. This includes, but is not limited to the phone itself having rounded corners, the “bounce back” effect when a user scrolls to the end of a list, and a way to distinguish between one-finger scrolling from two-finger gestures such as the popular pinch-to-zoom gesture that expands an image or website. This case was settled in 2012 with the Jury awarding Apple $1 billion in damages.
Naturally, Samsung appealed and since then they’ve been able to reduce the payout to $400 million. However, they are not done as Judge Lucy Koh of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California has just granted Samsung a retrial. While the two companies could still agree to a settlement, the next step of action is for the attorneys from both Samsung as well as Apple to come to an agreement about what date the retrial should begin.
The two have until October 25th before they are required to submit something in writing. Some are speculating that due to the upcoming trial between Apple and Qualcomm, these two companies could come to an agreement since both are on the same side of that dispute. The goal of this retrial though is to figure out the exact mechanics used to calculate damages. So the new jury will need to determine if the damages Samsung pays will be based on the total profit it made from its handsets, or merely a percentage of that profit.
Source: FOSS Patents
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