Apple V. Samsung: Case Summary

Apple V. Samsung

Author: Santoshi karasi

2010: Apple had warned Samsung saying that it believes that the Korean company is infringing upon Apple patents.

2011: The patent battle started in 2011 when Apple alleged Samsung of “slavishly” copying the iPhone design.

Samsung then countered the allegation by suing Apple accusing the company of infringing Samsung’s software patents. This went on and on, and the multiple cases were filed on multiple patents.

2012: In favour of Apple a US jury ruled that Samsung must pay Apple more than $1.05 billion for copying certain features of iPhone and iPad.

2013: In a retrial, the penalty of $1.05 was reduced to $600 million later due to a “jury error”. In addition, the jury said that Samsung should pay Apple over $290 million for infringing on the company’s patents.

2014: In one of its trial, a jury found both Apple and Samsung infringing upon each others’ patents. For which Apple was awarded $120 million, and Samsung with $160,000.

Meanwhile, both companies decided to drop all the patent cases outside the US.

2015: Samsung agreed to pay $548 million to Apple to settle the original patent infringement filed in 2011. By this time, none of the 16 infringing smartphones was available in the market any longer.

In 2016:  The case reached to US Supreme court, and Samsung challenged the lower court’s ruling that Samsung should pay 100% of the profits earned from its smartphone business- close to $399 Million. However, Supreme Court rejected the ruling and returned the case to lower courts saying that paying all profits was wrong, as the infringed patents are only a small part of the devices and not the full devices.

May 2018: US jury finally ordered Samsung to pay Apple $539 million in lieu of the damages for “copying features of the original iPhone”.

Samsung paid that amount after both companies agreed in to drop litigation outside of the US.