By JESSICA E. VASCELLARO
SAN JOSE, Calif.â€"A federal court jury delivered a big win to Apple Inc., finding that Samsung Electronics Co. infringed six of the Silicon Valley company's patents and awarding $1.05 billion in damages in a closely watched case over mobile devices.
The jury also found that Apple's iPhone and iPad tablet didn't infringe any of the patents that Samsung had presented in the trial.
The award from the nine-member jury is shy of Apple's request for more than $2.5 billion, but much larger than Samsung's estimates and still ranking among the largest intellectual-property awards on record.
Jurors found that Samsung infringed all but one of the seven patents at issue in the case--a patent covering the physical design of the iPad. The found willful infringement by Samsung in five cases, a finding that can affect the size of damage verdicts. They found all seven of Apple's patents valid, despite, Samsung's attempts to have them thrown out.
The jury reached its verdict after about 22 hours of deliberation spanning three daysâ€"a quick decision for such a complex case.
The verdict ends a nearly month-long trial that pitted two of the world's largest and most recognizable companiesâ€"and their high-priced legal teams. While the ruling won't affect any of the companies' latest products, it could shape how smartphones and tablets are designed and the fortunes of companies that make them.
During the trial, Apple and Samsung considered much of the evidence so sensitive that their lawyers fought fiercely to exclude them from the case, arguing they would divulge corporate secrets or weren't relevant.
The two women and seven men sorted through 28 different Samsung devices that Apple alleges Samsung infringed as many as seven patents and two other related claims, which cover innovations ranging range from the look of on-screen icons to the detection of finger gestures on the touch-screen. Samsung has countered by accusing the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch of infringing as many as five patents, two of which are related to how the iPhone and iPad send data.
Jury Verdict Form
Jury Instructions
Apple, which sued Samsung last year, is leaning heavily on the South Korean technology firm's internal strategy documents to prove Samsung deliberately copied the iPhone. "Samsung was the iPhone's biggest fan," said Harold McElhinny, Apple's lead trial lawyer, during closing arguments on Tuesday. "They tried to compete with it, and when they couldn't, they copied it."
The Cupertino, Calif., company has frequently referenced a 132-page internal Samsung strategy document entitled "Relative Evaluation Report on S1, iPhone," dated March 2, 2010. It contains grids comparing a range of features of the iPhone and Samsung's Galaxy S1 smartphone, and lists "directions for improvement"â€"many of which entail mimicking a feature on the iPhone. Another 2010 email cited by Apple lawyers contains notes from the head of Samsung's mobile device division lamenting in a meeting how its phones fell short of the iPhone, calling it "a difference between heaven and Earth. It's a crisis of design."
Samsung lawyers argued that being inspired by one's competitors isn't illegal. They cite an email from Jan. 24, 2011, sent by Apple senior vice president Eddy Cue to Chief Executive Tim Cook and other executives expressing praise for a 7-inch Samsung tablet, a smaller size than the iPad. The email, providing a rare glimpse of opinion inside Apple's highest ranks, lent credence to earlier reports that the company will soon introduce a product in a class of devices it has previously dismissed.
But Samsung's case hung on the belief that Apple's design ideas weren't original. Devices introduced as evidence took the jury on a trip back in time.
Phone Wars
The fate of Apple and Samsung's patent trial is in the hands of a jury. The nine members must decide whether 28 Samsung phones and tablets, and five Apple devices, infringe multiple patents. Explore which patents are in contention.
There is the DiamondTouch, a computerized table with a touch-screen dating to about 2005. Samsung argues the little-noticed product and applications running on it beat Apple to the market with "pinch-to-zoom" and "bounce-back" functions and makes two key patents invalid.
Samsung urged the jury to consider the "Fidler Tablet," a device for reading e-newspapers conceived around 1994. Roger Fidler testified via video during the trial about the device, which has rounded corners like the iPad, and was never sold. Samsung contends the device was similar enough to Apple's to throw out one of the design patents in the case.
Another important document: a sketch of a Samsung tablet that appeared in an email dated Jan 6, 2010, three weeks before the first iPad was announced. Samsung argues the black-and-white mock-upâ€"embedded in an email to a senior Samsung industrial designer, Jin Soo Kimâ€"proves it conceived of its Galaxy tablet design before the iPad was unveiled. Mr. Kim and another Samsung designer testified that they didn't copy Apple's products.
The iPhone That Could Have Been
Lawyers following the case say that Apple has to do more than show Samsung wanted to make its products more like the iPhone.
"The real question is whether Samsung's designs are close enough to Apple's to be infringing," said Jorge Contreras, an associate professor at American University Washington College of Law.
For determining whether the devices infringe Apple's design patents or dilute its trade dressâ€"the overall appearance of the deviceâ€"a key issue is whether consumers could confuse Samsung and Apple products. To prove they could, Apple introduced a report from Best Buy Co. that mentions people returning Samsung's Galaxy Tab because they had been looking for an iPad.
Judge Koh earlier issued an injunction against one of the disputed products, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, on the grounds that Apple had a strong case.
Jurors, who had access to devices during deliberations, were expected to study them feature by feature, judging whether their thickness, rounded edges, fronts, backs and icons are "substantially the same" as those cited in Apple design patents. They must come to a unanimous decision to find any device infringes a patent.
In his final remarks Tuesday, Charles Verhoeven, a Samsung lawyer who works for Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP, showed close up drawings of the iPhone's bezelâ€"the casing that runs around the rim of the phoneâ€"from a related patent, and the Galaxy S 4G's bezel. He noted that the iPhone's casing was a uniform thickness and the Galaxy's wasn't. "It is a completely different design style," he said.
Write to Jessica E. Vascellaro at jessica.vascellaro@wsj.com
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