The long tale of the legal battle between Apple and Samsung grew a little longer tonight, as Judge Lucy Koh tonight handed down a batch of orders related to the trial verdict from August 2012. The good news for Samsung tonight is that Judge Koh ruled that five of its acts of infringement were not willful, overturning the jury's decisions that Samsung had willfully infringed on Apple's patents.
As noted by The Verge, that Samsung argued that some of the patents could be invalid for reasons related to indefiniteness or for being not obvious, and Judge Koh felt that Sammy had objectively reasonable defenses to the infringement of the patents. Judge Koh's decision means that Apple won't be getting any enhancements to the damages that its been awarded.
While there's still quite a bit of this Apple-Samsung battle left to go, tonight's decision related to willful infringement has likely made Samsung pretty happy. Samsung may ultimately still need to pony up the $1.049 billion in damages that Apple was previously awarded, but Judge Koh's decision that Samsung's infringement wasn't willful means that Sammy's payment won't be inflated due to willful infringement. It's still possible that that damages payment could be knocked down a bit by Judge Koh, but we'll have to wait for another day and another handful of orders from Judge Koh before we know the final amount that Samsung will be handing over to Apple.
In addition to the rulings on willful infringement, Judge Koh made decisions on some other motions made by both Apple and Samsung. For example, the judge ruled that claims 10 and 15 of the Samsung-held U.S. Patent No. 7,675,941 were invalid. The '941 patent is related to transmitting and receiving packet data. Judge Koh also shot down Apple and Samsung's requests for new trials. More details on all of Judge Koh's multiple rulings can be found by hitting up the links below.
Via The Verge, FOSS Patents
