Apple gives judge Samsung ban list
Apple has given a US judge a list of eight Samsung Electronics products it wants pulled from shelves and banned from the US market.
US District Judge Lucy Koh asked for the list yesterday after a jury in San Jose, California, last week hit Samsung with a €1.05b (€830m) verdict, finding that the South Korean technology giant had wilfully copied Apple’s iPhone and iPad in creating and marketing the products. Samsung plans an appeal.
The products Apple wants banished from the United States are all smartphones: Galaxy S 4G, Galaxy S2 AT&T, Galaxy S2, Galaxy S2 T-Mobile, Galaxy S2 Epic 4G, Galaxy S Showcase, Droid Charge and Galaxy Prevail.
On June 26 Judge Koh banned the Galaxy Tab 10.1 from the US market after finding it probably broke a “design patent”.
Samsung is now asking for that ban to be lifted after the jury found the computer tablet did not infringe that particular patent, but it did find it infringed three Apple’s software patents that cover the popular “bounce-back” and pinch-to-zoom features.
The judge has scheduled a September 20 hearing to discuss Apple’s demands for the sales bans. She asked Apple on Friday to submit the list of products its wants removed from US stores after Samsung complained it did not have enough time to prepare for the scheduled hearing.
The judge is deciding whether to reschedule the hearing to give Samsung more time to prepare. The South Korean company plans to ask the judge to toss out the jury’s verdict as unsupported by the evidence.
Failing that, the company says it will appeal against the verdict to higher courts, including the US Supreme Court.
In addition to the sales bans, Apple also plans to ask the judge to triple the damages to $3.15bn dollars (€2.51bn) because of the jury’s finding that Samsung wilfully copied Apple.
Apple filed its lawsuit in April 2011 alleging that 28 Samsung smartphones and computer tablets had “slavishly copied” the iPhones and iPads.
Samsung countered with its own claims that Apple used its wireless technology without proper compensation.
A nine-person jury in its verdict on Friday unanimously agreed with Apple. Most of the damages were tied to Samsung’s smartphones. It rejected Samsung’s counterclaims.
Most of the Samsung products found to have “infringed’ Apple’s patent were older devices no longer being sold. The list Apple presented to the court yesterday represents devices it believes are still being sold in US stores, including several versions of the company’s popular S2 phones introduced last year.
Samsung’s newest and hottest selling smartphone, the Galaxy S3, was not part of the lawsuit and is unaffected by the jury’s verdict.
The award represents about 1.5% of Samsung’s annual revenue. Analysts said the embarrassment of the verdict is a bigger blow for Samsung than the financial setback.
Still, the question remains whether Samsung and other Apple competitors will have to redesign their smartphones to avoid infringing Apple’s patents. Most analysts agree the verdict sends a threatening message to device makers like Samsung who use Google’s Android operating system.
