A U.S. appeals court overturned a $120
million patent infringement case against Samsung on Friday February 26th,
giving Samsung, a notable smart phone maker, a significant victory over its top
rival Apple. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington,
D.C. asserts that Samsung didn’t infringe Apple's "quick links"
patent. In addition, the jury found two of Apple’s patents to be invalid do to
simplicity and the fact that they were not a unique art. I spoke with a current
student at the Boalt Law School at Berkeley about this case and he says that in
order for a patent to be deemed invalid, there must be substantial evidence
that the patents make no new claims on top of pre-existing patents.
A Samsung representative said that this
is a huge women because they are able to “keep their products out in the
marketplace and out of the courtroom.”Apple and Samsung have been going head to
head in the mobile networking space for over a decade, and the highly coveted
technology patents can mean the difference in hundreds of millions of dollars
in lost revenue. Apple has an extensive patent portfolio on some crucial parts
of both software and hardware in the mobile phone space. Recently, Samsung was
forced to pay Apple $548.2 million, which Samsung is currently in the appeals
process.
The cases typically take years to
unfold, as both companies go back and forth with claims of infringement and
appeals. Samsung’s win in the appeal reverses a May 2014 decision from a California
federal court ruling that ordered Samsung to pay $119.6 million for infringing
on one of Apples patent.
Samsung was accused of infringing on the
quick links feature, which enables reading of data from the screen, and linking
it to other features in the phone. An example of this would be a phone number
in an email, where someone could tap it and immediately begin making a phone
call to that number.
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