Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda: Apple Makes Case for Why It Deserves $379 Million More From Samsung

Apple is making its case Tuesday for why it believes it deserves most of the $400 million in damages that is at issue in a partial retrial of last year’s patent infringement case with Samsung.

The original jury’s finding of infringement on Samsung’s part, as well as a good chunk of the $1 billion verdict, remains intact. However, Judge Lucy Koh ruled that the jury erred in how it assessed part of the damages calculation, necessitating the current retrial.

Apple argues it is due $379 million for the products at issue, while Samsung has maintained it should only have to pay $52 million. Both sides are appealing various parts of the original issue as well, with Apple seeking injunctions on certain Samsung products and Samsung looking to have the original verdict thrown out due to what it said are multiple procedural errors in the case.

Apple lawyer Bill Lee said that both sides agree that Samsung sold 10.7 million infringing phones during the time at issue in the case, generating $3.5 billion in revenue.

“No one is trying to take all of their revenues away,” Lee said. “We have asked for approximately 10 percent of what they collected for infringing our products.”

That said, percentage of revenue is not how damages are determined, so Lee then took jurors through its math, which includes a portion of Apple’s lost profits, a reasonable royalty for infringement of utility patents as well as a portion of Samsung’s profits on infringing products.

As to whether the patents are significant or trivial, Lee argued that the paperwork supports the case that Apple’s patents were important to Samsung’s effort to catch up to the iPhone and iPad.

“Documents don’t lie,” Lee said, beginning Apple’s closing argument in the case. Lee showed off pictures of the kinds of phones Samsung was selling before the iPhone, then pointed to various reports from inside Samsung as well as pictures of what Samsung’s phones looked like post-iPhone. “In some ways our best witness is Samsung.”

He also tried to preempt Samsung’s argument that the patented features at issue in this case aren’t such a big deal. He made the case for one such patent, which covers the bounce-back effect that occurs when one scrolls and reaches the bottom of the page on an iPhone.

“The bounce-back wasn’t narrow; it wasn’t insignificant,” Lee said. “It was serious.”

He also rejected as “woulda, coulda, shoulda” the contention that Samsung could have easily and quickly designed around Apple’s patents if it had to. “But they didn’t,” Lee contended.

Lee also made much of the fact that Apple executives — including Phil Schiller — testified in the case, while Samsung brought no executives from Korea to appear in the case.

“Samsung brought you no one to explain how they develop their products and why they developed them in an infringing way,” Lee said.

Lee wrapped up by extolling the virtues of the patent system and saying Apple deserved to be compensated for its innovations.

“Apple sat in those rooms and they invented,” Lee said. “They took an enormous risk.”

The six-woman, two-man jury should get the case later on Tuesday, following Samsung’s closing arguments.

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