By Paul Elias
SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) --A Silicon Valley jury on Thursday added $290 million more to the damages Samsung Electronics owes Apple for copying vital iPhone and iPad features, bringing the total amount the South Korean technology titan is on the hook for to $930 million.
The verdict covers 13 older Samsung devices that a previous jury found were among 26 Samsung products that infringed Apple patents.
The previous jury awarded Apple $1.05 billion. But U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh reduced the damages to $640 million after ruling that jury miscalculated the amount owed on 13 devices and ordered a new trial.
Apple had asked for $380 million, arguing Samsung's copying cost it a significant amount of sales. Samsung countered that it owed only $52 million because the features at issue weren't the reasons most consumers chose to buy Samsung's devices instead of Apple's.
Samsung said it would appeal both verdicts.
"For Apple, this case has always been about more than patents and money," Apple spokeswoman Kristin Huguet said. "While it's impossible to put a price tag on those values, we are grateful to the jury for showing Samsung that copying has a cost."
A third trial is scheduled for March to consider Apple's claims that Samsung's newest devices such as the popular Galaxy S III on the market also copied Apple's technology.
Apple and Samsung are the world's two biggest smartphone makers. The bitter rivals have been waging a global battle for supremacy of the $300 billion worldwide market. The size of the award didn't faze Wall Street or harm or help either company's financial fortunes in any significant way.
Samsung reported it had $47 billion in cash at the end of September and racked up $247.5 billion in revenue last year. Apple has $147 billion of cash on hand and took in $170.9 billion in revenue last year.
"We understood that the money wasn't really an issue," said juror Barry Goldman-Hall. "This was about the integrity of the patent process."
Goldman-Hall, 60, of San Jose was one of two men and six women on the jury, which was tasked only with determining damages.
Apple has argued in courts, government tribunals and regulatory agencies around the world that Samsung's Android-based phones copy vital iPhone features. Samsung is fighting back with its own complaints that some key Apple patents are invalid and Apple has copied Samsung's technology.
Samsung lawyer William Price argued Apple is misconstruing the breadth of its patents to include such things as basic rectangle shape of most smartphones.
"Apple doesn't own beautiful and sexy," Price told the San Jose jury.
Apple attorney William Lee told the jury that Samsung used Apple's technology to lift it from an also-ran in the smartphone market three years ago to the world's biggest seller of them today.
"Apple can never get back to where it should have been in 2010," Lee told the jury Tuesday at the conclusion of the weeklong trial.
The fight in San Jose is particularly contentious. The courtroom is a 15-minute drive from Apple's Cupertino headquarters, and several prospective jurors were dismissed because of their ties to the company.
The three jurors who discussed the verdict outside court said Apple's proximity made no difference in their deliberations.
"Although Apple is down the street, it's a global company just like Samsung," jury forewoman Colleen Allen said. "I have a Samsung television and refrigerator and an Apple computer. I like both companies."
Allen, 36, of Aromas, is an emergency room nurse who served nearly eight years in the Navy, including a posting in Afghanistan.
"If we didn't award Apple much, we're saying it's OK to infringe patents," Allen said.
The South Korea-based Samsung has twice sought to stop the trial, accusing Apple on Tuesday of unfairly trying to inflame patriotic passions by urging jurors to help protect American companies from overseas competitors. The judge denied Samsung's request for a mistrial, but did reread an instruction ordering jurors to put aside their dislikes and biases in deciding the case.
On Wednesday, Samsung again demanded a halt to the trial after the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office told Apple it was planning to invalidate a patent protecting the "pinch-to-zoom" feature at issue in the jury's deliberation. The judge ordered more briefing while declining to stop the trial.
Jennifer Kent On Why Her Feature Directing Debut, “The Babadook,” Continues To Haunt Us
"The Babadook," when it was released 10 years ago, didn't seem to portend a cultural sensation.
It was the first film by a little-known Australian filmmaker, Jennifer Kent. It had that strange name. On opening weekend, it played in two theaters.
But with time, the long shadows of "The Babadook" continued to envelop moviegoers. Its rerelease this weekend in theaters, a decade later, is less of a reminder of a sleeper 2014 indie hit than it is a chance to revisit a horror milestone that continues to cast a dark spell.
Not many small-budget, first-feature films can be fairly said to have shifted cinema but Kent's directorial debut may be one of them. It was at the nexus of that much-debated term "elevated horror." But regardless of that label, it helped kicked off a wave of challenging, filmmaker-driven genre movies like "It Follows," "Get Out" and "Hereditary."
Kent, 55, has watched all of this — and those many "Babadook" memes — unfold over the years with a mix of elation and confusion. Her film was inspired in part by the death of her father, and its horror elements likewise arise out of the suppression of emotions. A single mother (Essie Davis) is struggling with raising her young son (Noah Wiseman) years after the tragic death of her husband. A figure from a pop-up children's book begins to appear. As things grow more intense, his name is drawn out in three chilling syllables — "Bah-Bah-Doooook" — an incantation of unprocessed grief.
Kent recently spoke from her native Australia to reflect on the origins and continuing life of "The Babadook."
Q: Given that you didn't set out to in any way "change" horror, how have you regarded the unique afterlife of "The... Read More