U.S. Federal Judge Lucy Koh has moved the hearing for Apple’s request for an injunction against Samsung phones to December, possibly diluting the economic effect of last week’s patent trial verdict.
Last Friday, in a surprisingly quick result, the nine-person jury found Samsung infringed several patents from Apple’s stable of successful phones and tablets. The jury ruled in favor of Apple receiving a huge damages sum of nearly $1.05B. A total of eight different Samsung phones were found to have infringed the former’s patents and as expected, Apple seeks to immediately ban them from creating additional revenue for the Korean giant.
In an order announced today, Judge Koh said the major reason for her decision to postpone the hearing is to provide a sensible amount of time for motion reviews. She expects both sides to submit even more motions for her review over the next few weeks, on top of the ones already submitted. Yesterday, Samsung officially asked the court for a hearing on clearing the Galaxy Tab 10.1 of the injunction imposed before the trial. The jury found the Tab failed to infringe upon any of Apple’s patents.
The move to an early December hearing is a good bit of news for Samsung. Even if the judge decides to ban Samsung’s phones, they will almost all be so old that most people wouldn’t be buying them anyway. The S Galaxy II is likely the only one of the bunch with any sales room to grow.
The December 6 hearing will include arguments on the “Rule 50” law provision. Rule 50 is the “Directed Hearing” legal rule that allows judges to change a verdict based on the bulk of a ruling based on evidence. In this trial, the rule may be used because the jury decided the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 did not infringe Apple’s patents. Lawyers from both sides will try to use the rule to make the Judge rule their way. Samsung lawyers want to throw out the whole verdict because they say the jury’s handling of the Tab issue shows they rushed their decision and didn’t consider the jury instructions properly. A couple of jury members already have revealed they relied on the emails of Samsung executives more than the industrial design of the gadgets, as they had been told to do. And Apple lawyers will seek to use the rule to show that, logically, if every other gadget was obviously infringing upon patents, then the Tab should be as well and Apple should be compensated properly.
We’ll report on the result of that hearing when it happens.
