The second month-long legal tussle between Apple and Samsung finally ended Friday as the federal jury ordered the latter to pay $119.6 million to the former for patent infringement of only two phone features. In a twist of fate, Apple was also ordered to pay $158,000 to Samsung for similarly infringing one of the latter's patents.
The jury of eight persons also ruled that Samsung didn't infringe two other patents that Apple earlier claimed.
The current decision was way below the $2 billion claim of Apple as well as the $930 million it won during their first case in 2012, setting a big blow to the company at the start of the year.
The jury ordered each company to pursue a judge order that will ban the sale in the U.S. of competing mobile devices with infringed patents.
During the second trial, Apple accused its rival of patent infringements on features such as universal search, auto-correct, slide to unlock and voice control of Siri on Samsung Galaxy S3 and Galaxy Tab 2 products, which Samsung firmly denied and called the claim of $2 billion as pure greed. Samsung also argued that these features were trivial and almost played no role in the purchasing decision of consumers.
However, in Friday's decision, Samsung was found infringing patents such as data tapping and slide to unlock on some of its devices such as Stratosphere and Galaxy Nexus.
"Today's ruling reinforces what courts around the world have already found: that Samsung willfully stole our ideas and copied our products," Kristin Huguet, Apple spokeswoman, says in a statement.
Meanwhile, Apple was found similarly infringing the auto-complete feature of Samsung.
It seems though that there's still a little fight left for Samsung as Judge Lucy Koh of the U.S. District Court requested the jury to reconsider the verdict on one mobile phone of Samsung that said to infringe the auto-complete patent because no damages were awarded to Apple in that case. For this reason, the jury is set to convene again on Monday.
Analysts think this is just one of the possible legal cases in the future of the two staunch rivals, but nothing to be worried because of its little impact on their consumers. The thing is, the products being debated were already outdated even before the case went on trial. For example is the S3, which is now replaced by the S5.
In fact, an analyst says the recent court decision over the second case was a victory for Samsung.
"Apple launched this litigation campaign years ago with aspirations of slowing the meteoric rise of Android phone manufacturers. It has so far failed to do so, and this case won't get it any closer," says Brian Love, who is assistant professor of Santa Clara University School of Law.
