“Apple Inc has paid its leading outside law firm approximately $60 million to wage patent litigation against Samsung Electronics Co Ltd in a California federal court, according to Apple legal documents filed late on Thursday,” Dan Levine reports for Reuters.
“The two mobile technology rivals have gone to trial twice in the last two years in a San Jose, California federal court, and juries have awarded Apple a total of roughly $930 million,” Levine reports. “In court filings, Apple asked U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh to order Samsung to pay $15.7 million of the total amount Apple has spent in legal fees”
“In its fee motion, Apple said it has paid the Morrison & Foerster law firm approximately $60 million through last month, not counting lawyers who had billed less than $100,000 on the case,” Levine reports. “Apple received “a significant discount” on Morrison & Foerster’s standard rates, it said, because of its longtime client relationship with the firm.”
Read more in the full article here.
And if Apple hadn’t spent this on protecting their IP, imagine what Samsung would continue to get away with and how much further they would stoop
Sorry, I used the word ‘stoop’, it would be impossible for Samsung to stoop, as they have already crawled so low, there isn’t anyway they could stoop on anything
…lower than snakeshit in a wagon track in Death Valley.
Samsung is so low they have to use a ladder to get to the bottom.
Hard to stoop with your head up your ass.
Only a company a financially powerful as Apple could take on a Samsung (Who basically has the resources of entire country of Korea). Most other companies would not have the resources to fight the protracted and global reach of these cases. Those companies would simply have had to grin and bear being raped by Samsung.
Hell, Samsung has spent $14 Billion just trying to sell Android feature phones.
Horrible times, when contract killers are cheaper than lawyers. Not that Apple should hire some.
They could’ve given $60M to the North Koreans.
CIA bought ’em all up.
Imagine if Apple had spent a fraction of that $60 million, say $50 million even, hiring an external firm of design consultants in the shape of Mr. Hartmut Esslinger of Frog Design, instead of farming out the design of iOS 7 icons to a couple of interns in the marketing department who happened to be sitting around doodling tracks on crayon paper, how much better it would be for the sufferers of bad iconology that has be undergone like ritual torture on a daily basis.
OK. Some people really don’t like iOS 7. But don’t you think it’s time to move on to something else?
Reminds me of the persistent ranting that happened when Apple moved Macs over to Intel’s chips.
The very reason SJ/Apple kept building upon that war chest of good old Cash! Without it, that Slavish Copying Convicted Samsung run by a Criminally Convicted CEO practicing in your face Nepotism would roll over Apple in Court.
you bet…lawyers are small potatoes when you can buy Portugal for cash.
If Apple spent a quarter of that in lobbying, they’d have ‘gotten passed many laws favouring them. Should’ve done it while it was cheap!
I wonder if Apple will be getting a significant discount from Bromwell since Christmas Cote seems to indicate that Bromwell will have a very long standing relationship with Apple, at least until the appeal.
The full article says that the $60 million IS a significant discount from the rates that the firm usually charges smaller clients.
Sorry. Misread “Bromwell”–the federal monitor in the antitrust case–as the law firm in the infringement case. My guess is that there will be some adjustments there, too, following the Wall Street Journal’s lambasting of the judge. The outrageous thing there is paying the monitor’s full hourly rate when he admittedly doesn’t know anything about antitrust and had to bring in another lawyer (essentially doubling the expense) to help.
As apple has been winning these suits against samsung, aren’t they entitled to request samsung pay their court costs?
Full article says that the reason Apple released the number was precisely to seek reimbursement for a portion of the fees (they can’t get it all because they didn’t win everything they asked for in the suit, just the odd $930-million or so).
Perhaps commenters should read the whole text to save themselves some time and worry.
I expect that it’s way more than 60 million.