A jury in the US has ruled that Samsung infringed on a number of Apple patents and has ordered the Korean manufacturer to pay its rival $290 million in damages.
The latest round of the high-profile Apple vs Samsung patent dispute, an eight member jury in California has deemed that the Samsung Galaxy S4 manufacturer unlawfully infringed on a number of Apple’s smartphone and tablet patents and intellectual design properties and as such should pay $290 million (£1179.5m) in damages.
The ruling it the latest sizeable chunk of cash Samsung has been forced to pay Apple, after further patent disputes recently saw the tech giant ordered to hand nearly $600 million to its leading competitor on the portable gadget market.
Although the £290 million damages ruling its almost $100 million lower than the $380 million fee Apple had been seeking, it is considerably higher than the $53 million Samsung said that it would be willing to pay.
Despite Samsung’s best last minute efforts to force a retrial, the jury today came to their verdict days after the case started to be heard.
During the two companies’ arguments, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Worldwide marketing, Phil Schiller, took to the dock to declare Samsung’s original Galaxy S handset a blatant copy of the early iPhones and Apple’s patented technologies and designs.
Discussing the first time he saw the original Samsung Galaxy S, Schiller stated: “I was quite shocked. They went and copied the iPhone.”
He added that Samsung’s blatant copying “weakened the view that the world has for Apple” and stated that the patent infringements caused consumers to “question our innovation and design skills in a way that people never used to.”
Talking on the work Apple put into the first iPhone and subsequent patents, Schiller stated: “There were huge risks [with the first iPhone]. We had a saying inside the company that it was a ‘bet-the-company’ product.”
He added: “We were starting to do well again in iPod [...] Then here we’re going to invest all these resources, financial as well as people, in creating this product.”
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Via: AppleInsider
