Samsung’s design team avoided ripping off the iPhone X’s notch for the Galaxy S9, but that could be about to change. The South Korean company has now patented its first iPhone X clone, complete with a notch at the top of its screen.
U.S. Supreme Court justices appear to be confused over how much Apple’s patented iPhone design should worth.
Lawyers for Apple and Samsung faced off this morning at the nation’s highest court. The two sides argued whether breaking a design patent should be worth most of a product’s profits, or if the thousands of other patents that go into a smartphone should be viewed as equally valuable to the contribution of profits.
Billions of dollars and the future of patent law is at stake in the case that hinges on a law written in 1887. But the justices didn’t give much indication which side they’ll take.
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Round two of what might be the biggest patent trial in tech history will be decided by a plumber, a police officer and a store clerk. Those blue-collar types are among the 10-person jury finalized Monday for the latest legal battle between Apple and Samsung.
“Jury picked,” tweeted San Jose Mercury News reporter Howard Mintz shortly after jury selection concluded. “Plumber, teacher, cop, secretary, store clerk, county worker, etc. Not [a] sniff of a tech geek to decide $billion patent trial.”
A judge in Seoul, South Korea has denied Samsung’s claim that Apple violated three of its patents, relating to short message services.
Following a win by Samsung in the International Trade Court claiming that older Apple devices violate one of its patents, the ITC has issued an import ban on iPhone 4, iPhone 3, iPhone 3GS, iPad 3G and iPad 2 3G devices that run on the AT&T network.
Apple wants to see documents related to Android source code in its ongoing patent infringement suit against Samsung. The Cupertino company has asked U.S. Magistrate Judge Paul S. Grewal to force Google to hand over the information, which it is allegedly withholding improperly, Bloomberg reports.
Apple has lost nearly half of the $1 billion in damages it was awarded last August after beating Samsung in a high-profile U.S. patent lawsuit. The presiding judge over the case, Lucy Koh, decided to invalidate $450.5 million of the original damages owed to Apple in a new ruling today.
Damages were incorrectly calculated for 14 Samsung devices related to the trial, and Koh has ordered a retrial for the updated damages amount.
Add another mark in the “winning” column for Apple today, as a judge from the US branch of the International Trade Commission (ITC) ruled that Apple did not infringe any of the four patents brought before the commission by Samsung.
Judge James Gildea posted his ruling in a short notice on the court’s website. He also found that Samsung was unable to prove that it had a “domestic industry” that used the patents in question. This last bit has to do with a requirement of the ITC that the patents being brought before the court must actually be used in the same country as that court. This ruling is preliminary; the full ITC panel will review the ruling early next year.
Apple’s victory in the courtroom over Samsung last month was met with cheers from Apple fans across the world, but one of the biggest Apple fans ever absolutely hated the ruling. In an interview with Bloomberg today, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak discussed Apple’s $1 billion legal victory and said that he doesn’t agree with it.
An interesting jury has been selected today in the high-profile patent case between Apple and Samsung. Of course, any details about said jury would be interesting simply due to their inclusion in such a pivotal legal case, but the list does sound like somewhat of a lead in to a stand-up comedy routine. An insurance agent, an unemployed video game enthusiast, and a project manager for AT&T are three of the ten jurors selected today to decide the issues behind the patent case between the two electronics superstar companies.
