How the Apple v. Samsung Outcome Could Change in the Coming Weeks

By Christina Bonnington


An image from the amended jury verdict form in Apple v. Samsung.

Jurors delivered a whopping blow to Samsung on Friday in their verdict for Apple v. Samsung — to the tune of $1.05 billion. But right away, we can expect the court system to tweak some of the jury’s findings, possibly by increasing the damages that Samsung owes Apple.

“Judges rarely overturn a jury verdict,” Robin Feldman, Professor of Law at UC Hastings and author of the book Rethinking Patent Law, told Wired via email. ”The judge would have to find that no reasonable jury could have reached this decision.” And given the judge’s rulings along the way, Feldman said she would be surprised if Judge Lucy Koh overturned the verdict. “The jury found willful infringement, which opens the door for the judge to award punitive damages. I would expect the trial judge to increase, rather than reduce the verdict.”

After four weeks of trial, Apple v. Samsung came to a close Friday as jurors decided that dozens of Samsung products infringed Apple’s iPhone and UI related patents. If it stands, we could expect higher-priced Android devices and increased product diversity in the future, along with a slew of renewed litigation against Android manufacturers.

On top of that, on Monday Apple asked for a preliminary injunction barring sales in the U.S. of eight out of the 28 infringing Samsung products: The Galaxy S 4G, Galaxy S2 (AT&T, Skyrocket, T-Mobile, and Epic 4G), Galaxy S Showcase, Droid Charge, and Galaxy Prevail. (The others are no longer for sale in any meaningful way.)

Judge Koh now has the option to grant enhanced damages (up to 300 percent) for willful patent infringement, a decision that should come within the next few weeks. Apple and Samsung will reconvene in court Sept. 20 for Koh to deliver her ruling.

But after the trial’s conclusion on Friday evening, some statements that jurors made to press could give Samsung a case for getting damages lessened, Groklaw pointed out.

“We wanted to make sure the message we sent was not just a slap on the wrist,” jury foreman Velvin Hogan told Reuters. “We wanted to make sure it was sufficiently high to be painful, but not unreasonable.”

This statement goes completely against the instructions the jurors received. They were told to award only sufficient damages to compensate the patent holder for the infringement — to restore them to where they would be financially if their intellectual property hadn’t been infringed. The damages should not be a punishment.

However, University of Oklahoma College of Law associate professor Sarah Burstein says that those jury instructions often end up being far more confusing than the case itself — even lawyers get tripped up on what it means. “In my experience, juries take their job really seriously. Juries do really try,” Burstein said. “The law, especially for trade dress claims, is really complicated.”
Still, Samsung could use this as fodder to readjust the damages in their favor.

The appeals court itself has a track record of lowering often exorbitant jury awards in intellectual patent cases. “The Federal Circuit has a history of scaling back big damages awards, which may spell trouble for Apple’s $1 billion in past damages,” Mitby told Wired Friday.

Samsung may also have a case in jurors’ inconsistencies in filling out the verdict form (the final amended version is shared below). In one instance, jurors originally found no infringement with regards to Samsung’s Galaxy tab tablets and Apple’s iPad-related design patents, and yet awarded over $200,000 in damages to Apple — perhaps a sign they weren’t paying quite enough attention to detail in their deliberations, and something Samsung could bring up as the case goes into post trial hearings and appeals.

Burstein echoed Feldman’s sentiment that Samsung has little to no chance of overturning the verdicts on infringement in the case because they’re so fact specific. She expects, like Samsung argued during the trial, that its attorneys will go after the validity of Apple’s patents. “That’s what they’re going to fight at the Federal Circuit, trying to get those issues on the table.”

The monetary damages Samsung will actually have to pay Apple seem pretty up in the air at this point — and other areas like Apple’s design patent validity could still be, too. “There’s certainly plenty of fodder for the Federal Circuit,” Burstein said. Indeed.