U.S. Appeals Court Overturns $120M Patent Victory Against Samsung – Two Patents Ruled Invalid

Score one for Samsung in their continual battle of patent ping-pong against Apple, as a U.S. appeals court on Friday overturned a $120 million Patent victory for Apple. The decision also invalidated two of Apple’s patents, their “Slide to Unlock” feature, and autocorrect.

Bloomberg:

The court ruling not only ensures Samsung doesn’t have to write another check to Apple; it can also continue using the smartphone features and won’t have to make any changes to older models.

The appeals court threw out the verdict that Apple had won, but upheld a jury finding that iPhone maker has to pay a $158,400 damage award for infringing a Samsung patent on video compression.

Samsung and Apple had argued before the Washington D.C.-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in January, with the majority of the arguments centering on Apple’s data detectors patent, which accounted for more than $98 million of the damages that were overturned on Friday.

Apple has originally sought $2 billion in damages for five patents they alleged Samsung had infringed – including swipe-to-text, universal search, and data detectors. Samsung alleged Apple had infringed two patents they owned, and had sought over $6 million in damages.

The dispute is just one of a number of lawsuit yet to be settled between the two electronics giants. December saw Samsung agree to pay Apple $548 million for another set of infringed patents.

Chris Hauk

Chris is a Senior Editor at Mactrast. He lives somewhere in the deep Southern part of America, and yes, he has to pump in both sunshine and the Internet.