District Judge Denies Apple, Samsung’s Post-Trial Motions
Los Angeles – A U.S. District Judge denied Apple’s bid to increase the $1.05 billion in damages the company was awarded against Samsung by a San Francisco jury in the companies’ ongoing patent war.
On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Francisco said that Apple had not provided sufficient evidence to prove Samsung’s infringement was willful and therefore denied Apple’s bid for treble damages.
The decision was one of many post-trial rulings Judge Koh issued Tuesday. She also denied both companies’ requests for a new trial, which were based on parts of the verdict that were adverse to each company’s interests. Judge Koh said that after reviewing the trial, she did not find error in the decision and upheld the jury’s verdict.
Judge Koh also denied Samsung’s request that the damages be reduced. The San Fransico jury awarded Apple $1.05 billion to compensate Apple for losses caused from Samsung’s patent infringement. The jury awarded the damages after determining that Samsung infringed six of Apple’s patents by using the protected technology in 26 models of smartphones and tablets without license from Apple.
Samsung claimed that the jury was not provided with a verdict form that was particular enough to allow it to properly calculate damages on a product-by-product basis. The company claimed that if the damages were properly calculated, the verdict would be reduced by more than $600 million.
Another argument Samsung offered for reducing the damages was its claim that Apple’s patents should never have been granted because the language was too vague and did not accurately describe the technology covered by the patents.
Judge Koh rejected both arguments and did not provide much detail on why she was upholding the amount of the verdict, particularly when she had said in a hearing on December 6th that the original award was not “authorized by the law” and that the jury’s approach to calculating the damages was likely faulty.
In Tuesday’s decision, Judge Koh said that the court would not speculate on how the jury determined the damages awarded, but claimed that it was reasonable to assume the jury calculated the damages in order to compensate Apple for any losses it suffered due to Samsung’s infringement of Apple’s patents.
Despite Judge Koh’s ruling, it is likely the case is far from over, as at least one of the companies will likely appeal the decision.