Jury Finds Samsung Owes Nearly $290 Million in Apple Patent Trial

SAN JOSE - A jury on Thursday said that Samsung Electronics would have to pay Apple nearly $290 million in damages for violating patents, putting an end to one chapter in the long-running patent saga between the two tech companies.

In August last year, a California jury determined that Samsung had infringed on a series of Apple patents and needed to pay more than $1 billion in damages. But the judge later revisited that sum and vacated $450 million of the original award, saying it was unclear how the jury calculated that portion, but said Samsung owed the remaining $600 million.

The latest trial was to determine whether Samsung needed to pay more or less than the $450 million that was vacated. In the trial, which ran for about one week in San Jose, Calif., lawyers for Apple and Samsung focused on how to calculate the damages: in lost profits or in royalties. The trial covered five patents and 13 products.

Including the damages remaining from last year's trial, Samsung now owes Apple about $890 million.

Apple argued that it deserved $379.8 million because it missed out on large amounts of profit after Samsung's smartphones entered the market. Samsung contended that Apple should get much less, $52 million.

Legal experts said Samsung was likely trying to minimize the damages to safeguard itself in future fights. The final award could influence another jury to make similar damage calculations in future lawsuits.

In the damages trial, the process for calculating the amount Samsung owed was simpler than in the previous trial. The jurors had to fill out a one-page form assessing the damages for each infringed patent, unlike last time, when jurors filled out a complex 20-page form.

Still, the new jury appeared to have some trouble crunching the numbers. On Wednesday afternoon, Ms. Koh called a meeting to answer questions from the jury about how to decide whether Apple was entitled to lost profit, and if so, how to calculate it.

Apple's lawyer, Harold J. McElhinny, showed an internal Samsung document to highlight that employees had acknowledged that the battle in the mobile industry was a 'two-horse race' between Apple and Samsung. Therefore, Mr. McElhinny said, many sales made to Samsung most likely could have gone to Apple.

Samsung, however, said that it should pay a much smaller amount in the form of royalties for each device it sold that carried the infringing features. Its lawyer, Bill Price, said that Apple was not entitled to lost profits because people bought Samsung phones for reasons unrelated to the features covered by patents, like the fact that some Samsung phones have bigger screens and that Samsung's phones and tablets were generally cheaper than Apple's.

On Wednesday, a day before the verdict was reached, Samsung tried to put the entire trial on hold. It filed an emergency motion to stay, arguing that a patent involved in the trial, which covered touchscreen mechanics, might be deemed invalid by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. In light of that, reaching a verdict now would be wasteful, Samsung said.

But Apple said in a response late Wednesday that Samsung's motion to delay the trial had 'crossed the bounds of reason,' saying it would be a waste of everyone's time and money

Over all, the six-woman, two-man jury spent nearly three days deliberating the damages total, amid discussions about what they could eat for lunch.

Apple and Samsung continue to fight over patents in courts around the world, but in the United States, the tide has shifted in Apple's favor. Both companies convinced the United States International Trade Commission that the other had violated patents, resulting in bans on each other's products. The Obama administration ultimately vetoed the ban on Apple products, while upholding the ban on Samsung products.

The two companies are scheduled for another trial in March 2014. That trial will involves a different set of Apple patents and some newer products, including Samsung's popular Galaxy S III - a smartphone that surpassed the iPhone in sales at one point.