Apple vs Samsung – Erratum and update.

Adjusting view for error regarding wilful infringement.

• Yesterday’s note (see here) was incorrect in its statement that no finding of wilful infringement had been found against Samsung.
• In fact, Samsung has been found to wilfully infringe the ‘721’ patent which claims rights over the slide to unlock feature on smartphones.
• This means that Samsung was aware that this feature was patented and deliberately infringed the patent by copying the feature.
• Therefore, RFM’s view that Apple’s post trial comments were without merit was incorrect and is withdrawn.
• However, the relevance of this wilful infringement is to be questioned given how the jury calculated the damages associated with this particular infringement.
• Wilful infringement is a serious infraction and is often punished by tripling the damages awarded.
• Hence, I am assuming that this has been taken into account when calculating the damages awarded to Apple.
• For the wilful infringement of the ‘721’ patent the jury awarded Apple $2.99m amounting to just 2.5% of the total award which in was already just 5.4% of what Apple had originally asked for.
• This strongly suggests that:
  • The jury did not consider this patent to be of significant importance as without wilful infringement damages could have been as low as $1m.
  • The wilful infringement did not do Apple’s business any meaningful damage.
• Hence, I suspect that this finding of wilful infringement will not affect Samsung in any material way although it could be used against the company in future lawsuits.
• Hence, my view that this is nothing short of a pyrrhic victory for Apple and that the real winners are Google and the Android makers remains unchanged.
• Furthermore, I still believe that this result will make Apple more willing to negotiate and that a deal could follow in reasonably sort order.