The lawsuit war between Apple and Samsung is far from over. On May 2nd, 2014, a jury determined that Samsung infringed Apple smartphone patents and awarded the American multinational corporation $120 million in damages.
The verdict was delivered in federal court San Jose in the latest lawsuit involving the two tech giants. It also ruled that Apple infringed Samsung patents and awarded $158,000 in damages.
Apple had sought $2.2 billion from Samsung after accusing the South Korean multinational corporation infringe five of its patents that cover functions such as slide-to-lock, automatic word correction, universal searching, quick linking and background syncing.
On the other hand, Samsung had sought $6 million after arguing Apple that had infringed two of its patents that are related to camera use and video transmission.
Two years ago, a separate jury ordered Samsung to pay Apple $930 million after finding it had used Apple technology to create older generation devices. Samsung appealed to that order.
The lawsuits were filed as both companies are locked in a struggle for dominance of the worldwide smartphone market that holds the potential of a staggering $330 billion. Samsung has become the leader of the sector with a 31 percent share while Apple on the same time, slipped to about 15 percent from a high of 27 percent three years ago.
the four men and four women jury delivered its verdict in the latest case after beginning deliberations on April 29th.
During the monthlong trial, Apple argued that many of the key functions and vital features of Samsung phones were actually invented by Apple. Samsung countered that argument and said that its phones operate on the Google Android software system. And if Apple has any legal complaint, the company must deal with the search giant instead.
Although much of the testimony focused on Google, the search giant was not a party to the case. Samsung defended itself and argued in court that Google and its Android software were the real targets of Apple, and Apple should not see Samsung as a competitor in this case because Samsung is just developing the hardware, not the software that is the main issue to be solved in the court.
In 2014, more than 70 percent of smartphones worldwide run on Android, a mobile operating system that Google has given out for free to Samsung and other phone makers.
Google entered the smartphone market while its then-CEO Eric Schmidt was on Apple’s board. The move infuriated Apple late co-founder Steve Jobs, who considered Android to be a rip-off innovation.
After removing Schmidt from Apple's member of the board, Jobs vowed that Apple would resort to "thermonuclear war" to destroy Android and its allies. At the recent trial, Samsung attorneys produced an email Jobs sent to executives in 2010 urging them to wage a "holy war" against Google's Android in 2011.
Early in deliberations, the jury wanted to know if Jobs had mentioned Google when considering the lawsuit that was eventually filed in 2012.
U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh told that no additional evidence was available to them beyond what was presented during the trial. Koh answered similarly to questions about Samsung's CEO’s reaction when informed that Apple's executives had complained to executives at the South Korean company about alleged patent infringement.
Jobs once said in his biography book written by Walter Isaacson: "I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple's $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong." Although the well-known innovator had passed-away, his words saying that "I'm going to destroy Android, because it's a stolen product" still describe what Apple is doing, and what it's going to do to defend what it thinks it's right.