Edible Apple

Apple must have made a wildly compelling case because it didn’t take the jury long at all to come back with a ruling, in an admittedly complex and nuanced case, in Apple’s favor.

Howard Mintz of the San Jose Mercury News reports:

Legal experts say the jury’s finding of willful infringement enables Apple to seek to triple the billion-dollar damage award, already believed to be an unprecedented judgment in a patent trial. The verdict also sends a threatening message to Samsung and other Apple competitors in the mobile-phone and tablet industry that use Google’s Android operating system, potentially making it harder for them to compete with the

While Apple was found to not have been infringing upon any of Samsung’s asserted patents, the same can’t be said for Samsung.

As for the ‘381 patent which relates to inertial scrolling, the jury found that all of Samsung’s accused devices were infringing.

Regarding the ‘915 patent – which pertains to one finger scrolling and two finger pinch to zoom – the jury found that all but two of Samsung’s accused devices were infringing.

Regarding the ‘163 patent, which relates to the tap to zoom gesture that Scott Forstall helped invent, the jury found that the bulk of Samsung’s accused products infringed.

As for the ‘D677 and ‘D0877 patents – which both relate to the front and back trade-dress of the iPhone, again the jury found that a number of Samsung smartphones infringed upon these.

The ‘D305 patent, which encompasses the trade dress for the iPhone homescreen, the jury found the following Samsung products to be infringing – the Captivate, Continuum, Droid Charge, Epic 4G, Fascinate, Galaxy S, Galaxy S 4G, Showcase, Gem, Indulge, Infuse 4G, Mesmerize and the Vibrant.

If there’s a silver lining for Samsung, and there really isn’t, it’s that the jury found that the Samsung Galaxy Tab doesn’t infringe upon the iPad’s industrial design.

So with that said, the jury ultimately awarded Apple $1.05 billion in damages.

Legal experts were quick to say Apple got just about everything it could want from the much-anticipated verdict. It was “a huge win, a crushing win,” said Santa Clara University law professor Brian Love.

Apple attorney Michael Jacobs told U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh the company would move to block the sale of many of the products in the United States within seven days; she already has issued preliminary injunctions against the Nexus phone and Galaxy 10.1 tablet.

Lastly, speaking to the verdict, an Apple spokeswoman said that the trial showed “Samsung’s copying went far deeper than even we knew.”

The fall out – potential injunctions, inevitable appeals – should be extremely interesting to watch.