More on the fight between technology giants and bitter rivals Apple and Samsung. U.S. District Court Judge Lucy Koh has handed down a 32 page order as a part of her post-trial rulings in the highly publicized Apple vs. Samsung patent lawsuit. While she has agreed with the jury on most of the counts including the fact that Samsung has infringed upon Apple’s patent rights, she has disagreed one finding by the jury which states that Samsung has “willfully” infringed upon Apple’s copyrights.
Needless to say that this news will bring joy to the Samsung camp which has been vehemently denying the fact that they did it willingly and that they did not think that Apple’s patents were valid. Koh had accepted this argument from Samsung. Koh’s post-trial rulings however dampen Apple’s attempts to rake in triple the amount of damages from Samsung which Apple were hoping to if the judge had agreed to the jury.
The fight between Apple and Samsung has been going on for a while and even though a ruling favoring Apple had been awarded in August of last year requiring Samsung to pay $1.05 billion in damages, both the companies had been fighting it out regarding the final penalty amount. Samsung had been trying to reduce the penalty by $600 million whereas Apple had been trying to extract an additional $500 million in penalties.
Koh had mentioned in her ruling that in order to hold Samsung guilty of a willful infringement of Apple’s patents a clear and overwhelming evidence is required that Samsung had knowingly infringed Apple’s rights knowing full well what they are doing.
Irrespective of her agreement with Samsung over the willful clause, Koh has however stuck by the jury in their opinion that Samsung has nevertheless did commit an infringement of patent rights in question held by Apple.
