Apple Wins Patent Infringement Court Case Against Samsung

San Jose, California — Apple has won a major jury trial against its chief competitor Samsung today in federal court for claims of patent infringement.

After deliberating over three days, a nine-member jury has just decided that Samsung infringed on six of Apple’s technology patents for smartphones and tablets. Based on this finding, the jury awarded Apple about $1 billion in damages.

According to the Los Angeles Times, “The nine-member jury accepted most of Apple’s claims that Samsung copied the look and feel of its iPhone to roll out its own line of smartphones.”

Although the details are still being analyzed, the Times provides the broad outlines of the jury verdict against Samsung:

According to reports from the courthouse, as of 4 p.m. Pacific the jury found that Samsung infringed on Apple’s so-called “pinch and zoom” patent, or the ability to make text on a touchscreen bigger by moving one’s fingers outward; as well as its bounce-back patent, or the way the image onscreen bounces back when it is dragged with a finger to the edge of the device.

The Wall Street Journal reports that at the same time the jury rejected Samsung’s infringement clams against Apple: “The jury also found that Apple’s iPhone and iPad tablet didn’t infringe any of the patents that Samsung had presented in the trial.”

The outcome of this month-long trial has huge implications for both companies, the New York Times observes:

The stakes in the case are enormous, in large part because Apple has become the most valuable public company ever through the blockbuster success of its mobile products. The lawsuit, and others like it by Apple, were an effort to respond to the rise of devices based on Google’s Android operating system, which Apple executives view as a knock-off of the software for the iPhone and iPad. Samsung is the biggest maker of Android smartphones.

Based on the latest sales figures, Apple and Samsung dominate the smartphone market worldwide.