Skip to main content

Samsung wins appeal in patent dispute with Apple | Reuters

A U.S. appeals court on Friday overturned a $120 million jury verdict against Samsung, finally handing the South Korean smartphone maker a significant win in its longstanding patent feud with top rival Apple.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, D.C., said Samsung Electronics Co Ltd did not infringe Apple's "quick links" patent, and that two other patents covering the iPhone's slide-to-unlock and auto-correct features were invalid. The court also said Apple was liable for infringing one of Samsung's patents.

In a statement, a Samsung spokeswoman said: "Today's decision is a win for consumer choice and puts competition back where it belongs - in the marketplace, not in the courtroom."

A spokeswoman for Apple declined to comment.

Apple and Samsung have been battling over mobile device technology patents for years. Apple has mostly prevailed, and in December, Samsung paid Apple $548.2 million stemming from a separate patent case, which Samsung has appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Friday's ruling was issued by a unanimous three-judge panel of the Federal Circuit, the country's top court specializing in patent issues.

The ruling reverses a May 2014 verdict from a federal court in San Jose, California ordering Samsung to pay $119.6 million for using Apple's patented technology without permission.

Infringement of the quick links feature, which allows the device to recognise data on the touchscreen, such as a phone number, and link to it to make a call, accounted for nearly $99 million of the damages.

While the appeals court said that Samsung did not use the same technology to detect and link to specific data, it also said Apple's other patents were obvious compared to previously known inventions and should never have been granted.

Chicago-based patent lawyer Bradley Hulbert, who has followed the litigation, said the decision is "a clear signal that Apple is not invincible and that alternative operating systems are here to stay. The marketing and psychological benefits for Samsung are huge."

Rutgers Law School professor Michael Carrier said Apple "rolled the dice" by going to court and today's decision "shows that the patent wars really are not worth it."

The case is Apple Inc v. Samsung Electronics Co Ltd et al, in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, No. 15-1171.

(Reporting by Andrew Chung in New York; Editing by Phil Berlowitz and Cynthia Osterman)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.


Source: Samsung wins appeal in patent dispute with Apple | Reuters

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Samsung is building a revolutionary ROLL-UP smartphone

GETTY • US PATENT OFFICE Example of a flexible display, LEFT, and the illustrations filed with the Samsung patent, RIGHT Samsung has been awarded a US patent for a brand-new foldable, rollable display to use across its smartphone and tablet ranges. The South Korean technology firm recently used its flexible display technology in the award-winning Galaxy S6 Edge, which has a dual curved QHD screen. However this latest patent, which was published by the United States Patent and Trademark Office, shows the company has bolder ambitions for its curved displays. The illustrations filed with the approved patent reveal a cylindrical hub, which houses the rolled display – which unfurls like a pair of window blinds. US PATENT OFFICE The US patent contains a futuristic cylindrical smartphone with a roll-up display Users then pull a tab at the end of the multitouch display to unroll it from the hub and use the full screen real estate available on the tablet or smartphone. To achiev
Post a Comment
Read more

The Samsung Galaxy Note7 (S820) Review

This year has been difficult for smartphones, which is a bit of a paradox when you consider just how much better things have gotten compared to last year. With Snapdragon 820, 650, 652, and 625 we've finally moved past the shadow of the Snapdragon 810, 808, and 617/615. While there were Android devices that shipped with the Exynos 7420, they were often paired with a modem that was not necessarily the most power efficient. Despite all of this, there seems to be a general disappointment with smartphones. People are increasingly finding it hard to justify phones like the HTC 10 or Galaxy S7 with competition from OnePlus, Xiaomi, and even Apple with their iPhone SE. In this context the Galaxy Note7 brings much of the flavor of the Galaxy S7 edge, but blends it with the S-Pen of the Note line and a few new features like the iris scanner. If you were paying attention to the industry with the launch of the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy Note5, it's very much more of the same rather than the m
Post a Comment
Read more

Why do Android fanboys hate admitting that Samsung copied Apple?

It's impossible to cover the mobile market without diving into the good ol' "iOS vs. Android" debate from time to time. These are the two biggest mobile platforms on the planet, so they're constantly being compared. Likewise, Samsung and Apple are the world's top two smartphone vendors, so their phones are constantly pitted against each other as well. Of course, there's another reason Apple and Samsung are often mentioned in the same breath: after entering the market, Samsung quickly grew to become the top mobile device maker on the planet thanks in large part to Apple. First, Samsung did everything it possibly could to copy Apple's iPhone and iPad. Then, it spent billions upon billions of dollars belittling Apple products in TV, online, and print advertising. Samsung spent years positioning its own devices as the cool alternative to Apple's iPhone, and its efforts paid off big time. Even now, Samsung continues to copy Apple all the time acro
Post a Comment
Read more