“Samsung, together with its lawyers, will have to fork out a little more cash following its loss in its second patent battle with Apple,” Ben Lovejoy reports for 9to5Mac.
“A court has fined lawyers Quinn Emanuel and Samsung a total of $2M for misusing confidential details of a patent deal struck between Apple and Nokia,” Lovejoy reports. “The documents were marked “for attorney’s eyes only” and were not to be revealed to Samsung executives.”
“Samsung later quoted exact terms of the deal in its own negotiations with Nokia, proving that it had access to the documents and that the court order had been breached,” Lovejoy reports. “[From the court order]: ‘No later than 30 days from this order, Samsung and QE are to pay Nokia a total of $1,145,027.95 and Apple a total of $893,825.77 in fees and costs.'”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Unsurprisingly, Samsung always seems to find itself on the wrong side of the law. Perhaps if the law ever caused them some significant pain…
Related article:
Tax evasion, bribery and price-fixing: How Samsung became the giant that ate South Korea – April 22, 2013
Lawyers are simply too dumb to grasp the scale of Samsungs willful cheating. That’s why they don’t find a useful job.
I think lawyers understand what Samsung has done very, very well. Understanding Samsung’s copying has made a lot of lawyers and firms incredibly wealthy.
The problem, for the most part, is that people (jurors) don’t want to punish it.
And why is that?
– We know, at least from reports, that Judge Lucy Koh has managed TWICE to poorly instruct jurors about how to determine fines.
∑ = Judicial ignorance.
– Mass technology ignorance is also a factor. As a friend of mine says, we’re going in the direction of having a cabal of techno priests who understand how everything works, and a childlike populace who are lead around by the nose thinking technology is magic they can take for granted within their manipulated lives. NOT a good thing.
∑ = Juror ignorance.
I think that’s right. There have been countless articles written about how we need specialized jurors for patent cases; normal people simply can’t grasp the magnitude of these cases. Think about it: The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office can’t even wrap its head around patents sometimes, because they issue tons of patents that become invalidated in court.
Since jurors don’t know what to do, and judges’ instructions have to be technical and accurately reflect complex law (otherwise an appellate court will require a new trial), jurors default to their gut instincts and are prone to “split the baby” between the two sides. That’s why both Samsung AND Apple were found to infringe patents in the last case: the jurors were clueless.
Oh yeah. The USPTO must be a loony bin of techno illiteracy. I get tired of ranting about it as nothing is going to change over there.
Good point about jurors being left to use their gut instinct. And poor instinct, a life saver in so many situations, it clueless when it comes to tech.
“Split the baby!” *Thwack*
I suffer more pulling out nose hairs than Sumsang ever suffers from willful, illegal IP theft and plain ol’ stupidity.
It’s enough to curl your tail!
Tell me about it!
Chump change.
Cheap at twice the price. They only have to pay legal fees. Imagine the money they made from taking advantage of the information.
Exactly what I thought.
This is no deterrent. They will do this over and over again because our court system has shown them that can’t lose on the money side.
A 1 Billion dollar fine would have gotten their attention.
Why?
They just keep appealing until they get to the verdict they want.
My thoughts as well.
Nokia and Apple only get reimbursed for the legal fees and costs they’ve already expended. There is absolutely no actual compensation to either Nokia or Apple.
There is absolutely no real fine levied against Samsung or Quinn Emanuel. Because it was clearly shown that QE and Samsung blatantly violated the non disclosure rule, this is the truly *absolute minimum* that the court could award and not be subject to a nearly automatic smack down by an appeals court.
While Apple and Nokia could appeal this ridiculous ruling, I doubt they will do so.
The question is, “How much will QE have to pay of that?” It was their lawyers that violated the ruling. Having been on the opposite side from QE in prior legal battles, I’d expect they won’t pay a dime and Samsung will pay it all. But then Samsung may get QE to appeal it and drag it out for another few years.
$2mil? How about “pay Apples advertising bill and refrain from dealing with anyone Apple has, does or did deal with for one year.
Seems more fair, like justice, to me…
Lawyers taking care of lawyers.
Layers making sure “legal FEE’s” are paid for the benefit of lawyers, but making no “fines” for the benefit of those that were violated.
Where is the Major Big News Media reporting on this? Helloooo?
Damn Dung from Samsung™
Death By A Thousand Cuts can sure be slow and boring. But at least the outcome is satisfying. Ouch OUCH OUCH! Eh Samsung? More on the way!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_slicing