Apple’s hired-gun experts took the stand Tuesday in the Apple v. Samsung lawsuit to explain to the jury why Samsung should pay $2 billion in damages to Apple for infringing on the Cupertino firm’s patents.
The first expert on the stand was John Hauser, a professor of marketing at the MIT Sloan School of Management, who argued that specific features patented by Apple, such as slide to unlock, made devices more appealing to customers.
Hauser had surveyed 966 Samsung device users (507 phone owners and 459 tablet owners) to reach that conclusion. He measured the percentage of consumers who would buy devices that sported specific features, such as background syncing, slide-to-unlock, autocorrect, and more.
He then used those results to determine how much people would pay for the Apple-patented features that Samsung had included in their devices. Hauser concluded that customers would be willing to pay $32 to $102 for each feature.
“The features that were enabled by the patents at issue in this case have a measurable impact on consumer demand for Samsung devices,” Hauser said during Tuesday’s testimony.
Samsung objected to Hauser’s methodology during cross-examination, criticizing his conclusion that consumers bought devices from Samsung due to features copied from Apple, and not for the Samsung brand and Android operating system.
MIT-trained economist Chris Vellturo then took the stand, and explained how Apple arrived at the $2 billion figure. He noted that damages were a mix of lost profits and estimated reasonable royalties on the millions of devices Samsung manufactured that are accused of infringing on Apple’s patents.
This latest lawsuit focuses on newer Samsung and Apple devices, including the Galaxy S III, Galaxy Note II, Galaxy Tab 10.1, the iPhone 4/4s/5, the iPad 2/3/4, the iPad mini, and fourth and fifth generation iPod touch.
Apple should be wrapping up its case against Samsung this week, and next week Samsung will present its own infringement case against Apple, asking for $7 million in damages.
(Reports from Re/code & CNET, via MacRumors were used in this article.)
