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A US JURY has ordered Samsung to pay Apple $119.6 million in a long-running patent case.
Although that seems a large amount, it is just a fraction of the big-money damages sought by the company in the high-stakes Silicon Valley case over smartphone patents.
The jury in federal court in California found that Samsung violated some patents and ruled that the South Korean consumer electronics giant should pay $119.6 million in damages.
Jurors also found credence in counterclaims by Samsung and said Apple should pay its rival $158,400 in damages.
In a statement released to US media, Apple portrayed the verdict as a victory that “reinforces what courts around the world have already found: that Samsung willfully stole our ideas and copied our products”.
The outcome is sharply different from a 2012 patent trial in the same court. Unlike the previous case in which Apple was a clear winner, this time Samsung prevailed in many areas.
Apple’s legal team had urged jurors to order the South Korean electronics giant to pay more than $2 billion in damages for flagrantly copying iPhone features.
Samsung lawyers maintained that the legal onslaught emerged from a “holy war” Apple declared on Google-made Android software used to power smartphones.
In August 2012, a separate jury in the same court decided that Samsung should pay Apple $1.049 billion in damages for illegally copying iPhone and iPad features, in one of the biggest patent cases in decades.
The damage award was later trimmed to $929 million and is being appealed.
Friday’s verdict came after three full days of deliberation in a patent trial that began in early April before US District Judge Lucy Koh in the Silicon Valley city of San Jose.
Patents at issue in the case involve unlocking touchscreens with slide gestures, automatically correcting words being typed, retrieving data sought by users and performing actions on found data such as making a call after coming up with a phone number.
Samsung devices targeted by Apple include more than half a dozen smartphones from the Galaxy line, along with the Galaxy 2 tablet.
Samsung, in a countermove, accused Apple of infringing on patents related to transmitting digital video and storing digital images.
‘Defensive victory’
Brian Love, a law professor at Santa Clara University who followed the case, said the outcome “feels like a defensive victory for Samsung, and not a particularly shocking one”.
“Though this verdict is large by normal standards, it is hard to view this outcome as much of a victory for Apple,” Love told AFP.
Apple launched this litigation campaign years ago with aspirations of slowing the meteoric rise of Android phone manufacturers. It has so far failed to do so, and this case won’t get it any closer.
He noted the award was less than 10 per cent the amount requested by Apple and likely just covers the company’s legal expenses in the case.
The verdict was also seen as a victory for Google, which was not a party in the case but was billed by Samsung attorneys as Apple’s main target.
Samsung’s legal team had stressed during trial that Google built the Android mobile operating software that was accused of violating Apple patents.
Google engineers were among witnesses called to testify as Samsung lawyers portrayed the case as an attack on Android, which has become a formidable rival for the software powering Apple smartphones and tablets.
Samsung is the world’s leading maker of smartphones and tablets built using Google’s free Android mobile operating system and has overtaken Apple in the smartphone market as the legal battle has been playing out between the two giants.
The outcome was very good for Samsung, but Google notched up a win with the verdict, according to patent analyst Florian Mueller of website FossPatents.com.
The verdict was firm but not final. Koh found a missing royalty amount due to Apple for a Samsung smartphone found to infringe on one of the patents.
Jurors opted to return to court Monday to address the apparent oversight, which was expected to bump up slightly the damages award to Apple.
The judge must sign off on the verdict before it is considered final and it is likely to be appealed.
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Boo! – Apple have done away with the Irish cailín (pale skin, red hair) who used to represent many Irish women – now we’ll have to choose between a blonde or a brunette. Bring back the redhead!
Tiocfaidh ar la.
Does that mean that only those people who have installed this will see the new emoji ?
Yes is the answer. This is an Irish flag test:
The flags work as special control letters representing the abbreviation for countries. On Android phones they usually show up as just the control letters, so, as always, an Irish flag can be displayed but only as a blue “IE”, not an actual flag. The system (at least before lollipop, not sure if its changed) never supported the actual flags but would just show the control letters instead.
WhatsApp does that too, but only if it encounters a combination it doesn’t have a flag for.
Any for android?
It just requires characters U+1F1EE and U+1F1EA to be entered in sequence ( a special “I” and a special “E”) but the system won’t display them as a flag. Apple hasn’t really added a new character. Just the ability to correctly recognise the combination.
Android, as of 4.4 anyway, doesn’t display any of these combinations as flags (not even U and S). Just as the control letters that make them up. Applications on android that don’t use the system emojis (WhatsApp and Facebook messenger for instance) may add support sooner, since they both support flags
I like that they’re in the kind of pop up menu thing so you don’t spend ages scrolling. Nice one.
I always thought the Irish flag would be a lot nicer without the orange
Go back to Limerick
The davedunne comment above is not me. It is a dam imposter. I am flattered all the same. I in all honesty don’t give a bollix about flag’s.
The davedunne comment above is not me. It is a dam imposter. I am flattered all the same. I in all honesty don’t give a bollix about flag’s.
Fine gael don’t approve ..
Anyone else not have the option of downloading the new update?
Note to self:
Block Brian Tong
Excited to see the Irish Tricolor being represented.
I would be more excited when my Android Galaxy S6 starts representing my flag!
What kind of phone do you have?
Ireland/…Ivory Coast flag
All I can say is
Noooooo. Fail, all the emojis didn’t show up
What a lot of
Erik just point g out he has the new S6
˙˙˙sᴉɥʇ pɐǝɹ uɐɔ noʎ ɟᴉ sᴉ ʇI
Why don’t android phones have flag emojis?
Flag on WhatsApp is Ivory Coast not Irish
have your say