Breaking: Apple (mostly) wins over Samsung in US patent trial

This just in from the States: the jury in the ongoing Apple v Samsung case in the United States that we’ve been covering has reached its verdict, and it’s not a good one for Samsung; the jury has found that Samsung has infringed on several of Apple’s patents and trade dress registrations. Moreover, the jury has awarded USD 1.05 billion dollars in damages to Apple for the infringements; not the $2.5 billion Apple was asking for, but still a substantial amount. While devices included in the infringing list are mostly American versions of devices, including the Galaxy S II, some international devices such as the Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the original 7-inch Galaxy Tab are also included.

Notably, however, the jury found that Samsung did not dilute the trade dress for the iPad; in layperson’s terms, meaning that Samsung’s tablets in question (namely the original Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the Galaxy Tab 7.0) did not deceive customers into buying them, believing it was an iPad.

On Samsung’s side, none of the claims that Samsung made about Apple products infringing on their utility patents were upheld by the jury.

One interesting takeaway from this –  the Nexus S 4G (the Sprint version of the Nexus S sold internationally) was found to have infringed at least two of Apple’s patents with respect to software, including ones referring to “bounceback” during scrolling and multi-touch detection. Since the Nexus S was a stock Android device, the possibility of Apple chasing up Google and other manufacturers using stock Android software remains open.

For the latest developments, The Verge has a liveblog of the verdict running here.

Source: The Verge