After a long and hard fight over patent violations, a jury ordered Samsung to pay Apple $290 million Thursday. The two technology companies have gone through over 50 lawsuits with each other since 2011. After three days of deliberating between the six women and two man jury, it was determined that 13 products caused a lot of their damage. Two of these, the Infuse 4G, and the Droid Charge, hurt Samsung the most, racking up about $160 million they would owe to Apple.
Of course, Samsung and Apple are two of the most profited companies in the game right now, so neither one needed to be paid any money. However, it allowed Apple to prove to Samsung that copying their products comes with a cost and will not be tolerated. What exactly did they copy? Samsung has used many important features of the latest versions of iPhone in their products. Not only did they copy the voice recorder app, but they copied charger plugs, ports, & cords, icons, packaging, Apple’s app Passbook, and even the way the phone looks. The original Galaxy S reportedly looks similar to the original iPhone as well as the Galaxy Tab when compared to the iPad.
In addition to product look and features, Samsung even used the same actress in recent commercials that Apple used in their old ones. Apple, even though they don’t need it, argued they should receive way more money, claiming Samsung should be paying them up to $379.8 million because of profit loss. Samsung, on the other hand, believed they should only have to pay less than $100 million.
The jury had a rough time trying to calculate how much money Apple really lost over Samsung’s copycat products. Even though Apple claimed their profits were lost due to customers choosing Samsung over their products, Samsung argued that people bought their products for reasons totally unrelated to patent covered features. They explained that consumers might have gone for the cheaper price or the larger screen.
In the U.S., many other trials similar to this one have come out in Apple’s favor as well. Bans were set on both companies’ products, but the Obama administration later took away the ones set on Apple, keeping the others on Samsung. If you think the fight is over you’re far from right. A new trial date is already set for March 2014, which will look at completely different patents and new products out on the market. Both Apple and Samsung make brilliant smartphones & tablets and neither needs more money; can’t we all just make up and be friends?