“With their California trial approaching fast, Apple and Samsung made filings during the last few hours that shed light on what’s at stake and on why the parties haven’t been able to settle their dispute so far,” Florian Mueller reports for FOSS Patents. “Let’s start with Apple’s damages claim as it is summarized in the public redacted version of its initial trial brief.”
“Samsung adopted as its number one goal to [redacted]’ in the smartphone and tablet markets, and it chose to compete by copying Apple. Samsung’s infringing sales have enabled Samsung to overtake Apple as the largest manufacturer of smartphones in the world. Samsung has reaped billions of dollars in profits and caused Apple to lose hundreds of millions of dollars through its violation of Apple’s intellectual property. Apple conservatively estimates that as of March 31, 2012, Samsung has been unjustly enriched by about [redacted; presumably $2 billion] and has additionally cost Apple about $500 million in lost profits. Apple also conservatively estimates that it is entitled to over $25 million in reasonable royalty damages on the proportionately small set of remaining sales for which it cannot obtain an award of Samsung’s profits or Apple’s own lost profits, for a combined total of $2.525 billion.”
Mueller reports, “This damages claim relates to past infringement. If the court granted Apple’s request for a permanent injunction against Samsung, infringement would end. If there are any infringements that the court identifies, but the court doesn’t grant Apple injunctive relief to stop those infringements, then the court will have to award Apple a reasonable royalty going forward — which has the effect of a compulsory license.”
These are the per-unit royalties that Apple calculated for its different intellectual property rights-in-suit:
• $2.02 for the “overscroll bounce” (or “rubber-banding”) ‘318 patent
• $3.10 for the “scrolling API” ‘915 patent
• $2.02 for the “tap to zoom and navigate” ‘163 patent
• $24 for use of any of Apple’s design patents or trade dress rights”
Mueller reports, “Indeed, we are talking about features that make an iPhone an iPhone and set it apart from a feature phone or from what today’s Android phones would be like if Google had not decided at some point to abandon its original plans for a more BlackBerry-style device and copy the iPhone operating software. And as high as those royalty rates may seem at first sight, Apple would much prefer an injunction over that per-unit royalty. Product differentiation is more valuable to Apple than compulsory licensing.”
Much more in the full article – highly recommended – here.