According to the reports reaching us from our sources, the smartphone patent trial between Apple and Samsung which has been on for seven years now has as a final verdict made Apple a recipient of $539 million from Samsung as a compensation for injuries. The court made to verdict in San Jose, California in conclusion that Samsung had infringed on the design of Apple products and utility patents under which certain parts of the iPhone design such as round corners, rims on the front area of the device, and lastly on the now-iconic app grid layout of the iOS home screen.
In a statement to some of our sources, Apple stated thus:
“We believe deeply in the value of design, and our teams work tirelessly to create innovative products that delight our customers. This case has always been about more than money.”
As clarified by our sources, the jury was contemplating on the matter and was having a difficulty in making a decision as to if Samsung was owing Apple money based on sales of smartphones or just on parts that infringed on Apple’s patents.
This lawsuit has been on right from 2011, and a lot of appeals and verdicts have caused it to be one of the most complicated infringement trials concerning corporate patents since the inception of the technological industry. In 2011, when the case initially began, Apple demanded the sum $2.5 billion dollars. However, in an opening verdict in 2012, the amount was brought down to less than $1 billion in favour of Apple. In May 2015, an appeal court ruled out that Apple could not brandmark the look of the iPhone legally thus further reducing the amount Samsung was meant to pay to about $548 million and in December that same year Samsung paid that amount when both of the companies had an agreement to drop the lawsuit.
After that time, a sequence of appeals has kept litigations open through federal court California. One of the two final cases concerning the iOS slide-to-unlock patent awarded Apple with $120 million. It does seem that the lawsuit between both Apple and Samsung is approaching an end.