Gigaom is reporting that Apple has been awarded US$929.8 million in their ongoing dispute with rival smartphone maker Samsung. However, the company has been denied the coveted prize of seeing Samsung’s devices ban from the US.
“Judge Lucy Koh on Thursday denied Apple’s request for a permanent ban on a number of Samsung devices found to infringe on Apple’s patents,” Alex Colon writes for Gigaom.
This is the second time judge Koh has denied the Cupertino-based company the opportunity to ban products from Samsung for infringement.
According to judge Koh, Apple’s expert Dr. Hauser’s survey wasn’t very persuasive:
The Court finds Dr. Hauser’s survey results are undermined because the survey appears to have failed to adequately account for nging:1″>noninfringing alternatives to the patented features.
The Federal Circuit in Apple suggested that courts should consider the impact of potential noninfringing alternatives in the causal nexus analysis… (“And if a particular patented laptop battery lasts significantly longer than any other battery on the market then the replacement of that battery with a noninfringing battery might make a laptop less desirable. In that case, it might be reasonable to conclude that the patented battery is a driver of consumer demand for the laptop.”). In other words, because there must be “some connection between the patented feature and demand for Samsung’s products,” Apple should show that the patented features are sufficiently valuable over noninfringing alternatives to drive consumer demand.
It doesn’t matter how you dice it – this is a huge blow to Apple.
