Apple set for replay against Samsung in court

Apple is set for a replay of a court fight against Samsung in which the iPhone maker may seek to recoup more than the $411m (€305m) in damages a judge cut from a $1.05bn jury award in 2012 over patents.

Jury selection was under way yesterday in San Jose, California, in a retrial over how much Samsung should pay for infringement of Apple’s intellectual property.

The original verdict in Aug 2012, which was the year’s largest in the US at the time, was found by a judge to be flawed because jurors miscalculated the period that the infringement occurred for some of the 28 Samsung devices on trial.

US District Judge Lucy Koh will instruct jurors at the outset of the retrial that the previous nine-member jury found Samsung infringed five valid Apple patents and that their “sole job” is to determine the amount of damages Samsung must pay for the infringement of 13 Samsung products. While Apple has not said how much it will seek, this jury’s revision of the damages to properly account for the infringement may result in more than the $410.6m being subtracted from the previous award, according to Carl Howe, an analyst with Yankee Group.

In global battles before courts and trade regulators, the world’s two top smartphone makers are spending hundreds of millions in legal fees on claims of copying each other’s features. Apple, which initiated the legal fight in 2011, is seeking to limit the Galaxy maker’s increasing share of the US smartphone market, where Apple is number one and Samsung number two.

Koh concluded in March that the original jury may have overstated damages by basing its calculations on incorrect dates for when Samsung was first on notice that its products infringed Apple’s patents. She also found the jury mistakenly awarded damages on profits for some Samsung products that infringed only utility patents, which isn’t legally permitted.

Adam Yates, a spokesman for Samsung, and Kristin Huguet, a spokeswoman for Apple, declined to comment on the retrial.