Although a jury in August 2012 awarded the California firm $1 billion in damages after finding Samsung guilty of violating utility Apple patents related to the iPhone and iPad, Judge Lucy Koh is still unimpressed. Having determined in January that the Galaxy maker did not “willfully” infringe on Apple’s patents, two months later she announced a decrease of the $1.05 billion verdict by $450 million.
Friday came word that Samsung argued in court documents that any permanent injunction in the United States against the infringing products “would not stop any ongoing infringement.” And why’s that? Because the Galaxy maker has either “discontinued the accused products or designed around any infringing features in the ones it still sells”…
Patent blogger Florian Müeller who covers these things extensively over at his FOSS Patents blog established that Samsung appears to be attempting to leverage the slow judicial system to its advantage.
Responding to the letters a law firm sent on Apple’s behalf to a bunch of U.S. retailers, related to a preliminary sales ban, Samsung wrote that “the only effect of an injunction would be to confuse and intimidate Samsung’s carriers and retailers with respect to non-accused products never adjudicated in this case, harming Samsung’s longstanding market relationships.”
Müeller explains:
Samsung seeks affirmance of Judge Koh’s holding that Apple failed to establish a causal nexus between the infringements identified and the harm it alleges to suffer from Samsung’s competing products.
How convenient.
Samsung floods the market with dozens of products and moves quickly to refresh a few months old gizmos with updated versions. The strategy allows the firm to react to lawsuits swiftly by incorporating workarounds and replacing infringing products with their updated counterparts before any definite ruling is reached in the courtroom.
Coincidentally or not, Samsung in March expressed worries that the second damages trial could see Apple win even more than the August $1.05 billion verdict.
Last week, Koh issued a new case management order binding the two parties to battling it out over damages on the remaining products this Fall.
The next hearing is scheduled for November 12, giving Apple a chance to get back some of the $450 million Koh cut from the damages settlement.