After a mere three days of deliberations, the jurors of the California court reached its verdict for the patent infringement trial between Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics. The jury ruled heavily on the side of Apple, and awarded them more than $1.05 billion in damages. Samsung, on the other hand, received $0.
Though Apple received less than half of the amount that they initially requested, they still emerged decisively victorious against the South Korean company. Samsung was charged for infringing seven Apple patents, while their own allegations were denied as the jury found Apple innocent of committing a single infringement.
While this verdict will not cause a huge setback for Samsung, it is still a landmark decision as it was the first trial over the dominance of the smartphone industry. This trial also set a precedent for future trials, as it grants Apple a right to sue virtually any company in the future that produces Android phones. Apple’s victory in this trial against a technological giant like Samsung will inevitably influence many other courts to rule in favor of Apple in future trials of this nature.
“Today’s verdict should not be viewed as a win for Apple, but as a loss for the American consumer,” said Samsung in an e-mailed statement according to Businessweek.com. “It is unfortunate that patent law can be manipulated to give one company a monopoly over rectangles with rounded corners, or technology that is being improved every day by Samsung and other companies.”
Many people have found the ruling controversial based on the location of the trial, San Jose, “which is an area where the late founder of Apple is considered a technology mogul” according to mobilebloom.com. Setting the location of the trial in this type of area in which one company is favored over the other may have played a great influence on the ruling of the jurors.
Additionally, the trial seems to have overlooked the fact that just because two products share similarities in appearance or features does not necessarily imply that one copied the other. Rather, Samsung has innovated the phones in their own unique way, just like Apple used their own creative ideas to build upon already-existing devices called smartphones. There is nothing wrong with being influenced by the trend and improving upon products already in the market- in fact, that is a common business tactic that can be found in any market.
So far, trials between these two companies have taken place in three other countries aside from the United States: United Kingdom, Australia, and South Korea. Though this trial has reached its end, the two companies continue to compete fiercely in the constantly-evolving smartphone industry.
