On Friday, after weeks of questioning, lawyers involved in the Samsung vs Apple trial finally presented their closing arguments. Today, the jury will decide how much, if anything, Samsung owes Apple for infringing on three design patents and two utility patents.
Friday’s courtroom kicked off with last-minute questioning of Samsung’s final witness, Michael Wagner – a management consultant.
To try and prove the point that Samsung should pay damages on the whole phone, rather than only the infringing components, Apple asked Wagner whether or not Samsung individually tracked profits on things like glass faces, displays, or bezels. Of course, Wagner answered no.
Samsung is said to have made $3.3 billion on the sale of 8.6 million smartphones that infringed on Apple patents. That number considers full-phone earnings rather than part-by-part earnings and Samsung wants to pay no more than $28 million in damages, whereas Apple wants $1 billion.
Apple also challenged Samsung’s belief that it shouldn’t have to pay damages for phones that were unprofitable:
Apple: “For 1 million infringing units — 1 million acts of infringement — that resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue, Apple should get zero?”
Wagner: “Yes.”
After final questioning, there were closing statements, with Apple standing firm on the grounds that you can’t dissect a phone and base damages on only certain parts of the device – as the patents cover a whole phone:
Apple lawyer Joe Mueller:
“The fact you can pull apart a phone means absolutely nothing. The question is what did they apply those designs to. It’s not a pane of glass, it’s not a display screen that doesn’t show a GUI. It’s the phone.
We respectfully request you return a verdict in favor of Apple.”
Apple lawyer Bill Lee argued:
“Samsung wants you to believe [that] if Ford had decided to rip off the Volkswagen Beetle shape… the right article of manufacture would have been the exterior shell of the car.”
Samsung’s John Quinn argued that Apple’s design patents do not cover the inside of the phone, meaning that Apple is not entitled to profits of the article of manufacturer where the design was not applied:
“It can sometimes be difficult to tell what is covered by a design patent and what isn’t.The Apple design patents do not cover anything on the inside of the phones. They don’t even cover the entire outside. Under the law, Apple is not entitled to profits of any article of manufacture to which the design was not applied.”
With the jury coming to a decision today, we could hear the results as early as tomorrow. As always, we’ll update you as the news arrives.