Kara Swisher

Recent Posts by Kara Swisher

Wall Street Reacts to Apple’s Legal Win Over Samsung: Maybe, Let’s Not Kill All the Lawyers!

Apple’s already soaring stock got yet another boost in after-hours trading today, after it largely won a bruising patent infringement battle with Samsung.

Shares of the tech giant, which have risen 76 percent in the last year, are now up almost 1.8 percent, or $11.73, to $674.95. Apple’s stock closed Friday afternoon at $663.22.

This comes on the heels of Apple becoming the most valuable public company of all time this week, after surpassing a market capitalization beyond $600 billion last week.

Now it is even higher, thanks to the jury verdict and — perhaps even more significantly for investors in the weeks ahead — as new versions of the popular iPhone and iPad are about to be launched this fall.

Today, with those iPhones and iPads a key part of the legal battle, the trial effect hit.

After the markets closed, jurors ruled that many of the Samsung smartphones and tablets infringed on various design and utility patents held by Apple on its popular iPhone and iPad devices. It also found some Samsung phones had violated Apple’s protected “trade dress” for the iPhone.

There will obviously be an appeal — Samsung said as much clearly in its cheeky statement about the loss:

“It is unfortunate that patent law can be manipulated to give one company a monopoly over rectangles with rounded corners, or technology that is being improved every day by Samsung and other companies,” the South Korean consumer electronics giant said. “This is not the final word in this case or in battles being waged in courts and tribunals around the world, some of which have already rejected many of Apple’s claims.”

But, for today at least, Wall Street likes the Apple legal victory.

Check it out for yourself:


Apple versus Samsung Full Coverage

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The problem with the Billionaire Savior phase of the newspaper collapse has always been that billionaires don’t tend to like the kind of authority-questioning journalism that upsets the status quo.

— Ryan Chittum, writing in the Columbia Journalism Review about the promise of Pierre Omidyar’s new media venture with Glenn Greenwald