Apple Inc is seeking about $1 billion from Samsung Electronics Co in another go-round stemming from a long-running smartphone patent-infringement dispute.<\/p>\n
Jurors at the retrial before before US District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California, learned at the outset that the South Korean company infringed three of Apple\u2019s design patents and two utility patents.<\/p>\n
Their sole job, Apple lawyer Bill Lee said, is to determine what damages Apple can collect.<\/p>\n
The basic question for the jury is: Should Samsung have to pay damages on the whole device or just the components that were infringed? Samsung says the latter – and is urging the jury to limit damages to $28 million.<\/p>\n
\u201cLawsuits can take a long time,\u201d Lee told jurors Tuesday. He asked them to \u201cstep back in time\u201d to 2006 to consider flip phones, sliders, and what other cell phones looked like before Apple\u2019s iPhone.<\/p>\n
Samsung made $3.3 billion in revenue and $1 billion in profit from millions of phones that infringed Apple\u2019s three design patents, Lee said. That\u2019s apart from profits Samsung made from infringing two of Apple\u2019s utility patents, Lee said.<\/p>\n
A $1.05 billion jury verdict from 2012 has been whittled down by a previous retrial in 2013, along with appeals and adjustments. After Samsung agreed to pay some damages, the case went to the US Supreme Court in 2016 and was returned to Koh with an order to revisit a $399 million portion of damages.<\/p>\n
Without mentioning the Supreme Court\u2019s ruling explicitly, Samsung lawyer John Quinn emphasized the room the decision affords the company to argue damages should be based on the profits it made off the specific components that were found to infringe Apple patents – rather than the entire device.<\/p>\n
Quinn told jurors to maintain an \u201copen mind\u201d and resist Apple\u2019s casting South Korean company as being \u201cmired\u201d in old phone models until it copied Apple. The scope of Apple\u2019s design patents \u201care so very narrow\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re seeking profits on the entire phone,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
But Apple\u2019s patents \u201cdo not cover the entire phone,\u201d Quinn said, adding that they are entitled only to the profits of the infringing components, and \u201cnot on anything that\u2019s inside the phone.\u201d<\/p>\n
The case is Apple Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co., 11-cv-01846, US District Court, Northern District of California (San Jose).<\/p>\n