Apple wants $179 Million more from Samsung after Patent Fight
Apple wants $179 Million more from Samsung after Patent Fight
And Samsung just paid out $548 million, too.
Apple and Samsung — or more precisely, their teams of incredibly well-paid lawyers — can't get enough of each other. This time, Apple claimed Samsung owes it an additional $179 million in supplemental damages (and interest!) because five of the Korean company's ancient Android phones violated a handful of Apple's design patents. US District Court Judge Lucy Koh officially granted the motion late yesterday.
Now, here's how the math worked out. Since each of the offending smartphones remained on sale after the verdict was rendered in August 2012, the court decided that each type of phone would get its own per-unit amount in damages. Those figures were then applied the number of each device sold after August 25, 2012. Check out the breakdown below:
http://i.imgur.com/S9jkRIc.png
Throw in about a million dollars in interest and you've got Apple's beef in a nutshell. We haven't been able to reach Samsung or Apple representative at time of publication (everyone deserves a holiday, we guess), but don't expect this situation to go uncontested. In case you haven't been following this odyssey, Apple won a $930 million legal victory over Samsung in 2012, and after plenty of courtroom back-and-forth, Samsung eventually paid out $548 million earlier this month. The two actually went at it in court again over allegations of patent infringement in Samsung's newer devices, but that didn't make nearly as much of a splash. (It didn't help that Apple's total purse from that fight probably wasn't much more than the amount it spent mounting a legal opposition.)
This, in short, is one hell of a love-hate relationship. Apple and Samsung are devoted supply chain partners, with the latter providing the former with (among other things) a considerable chunk of the A9 chipsets for the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus. And just when it seems like everything is inching toward détente, they lunge at each other in court once more. Hopefully your holiday is a little less dramatic than theirs.
