Tuesday was a rough day for Samsung in the U.S. court system, and even though Wednesday brought a victory against Apple in the Netherlands it appears to be a situation where the winner is going to end up the biggest loser. If you work for Samsung, you might just want to stop reading here. For the rest of you, join us for another week of Law & Apple.
According to Florian Mueller of FOSS Patents, Tuesday was not a good day for Samsung's defense against Apple. Although Samsung finally won its first offensive case (a case brought by Samsung against Apple) in the Netherlands, the victory was particularly insignificant and not what the Korean consumer electronics company was hoping for at all.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Court (CAFC) denied Samsung's petition for a rehearing, which makes an injunction against the Galaxy Tab 10.1 more likely. The CAFC ruling is the latest move in a cat-and-mouse game between Apple and Samsung regarding Cupertino's attempts to block the sale of the Galaxy Tab 10.1. Since Samsung's request for a rehearing was denied, the CAFC will probably issue a ruling to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California shortly. That ruling is expected to clear the way for Apple to refile an injunction request against the device with Judge Lucy Koh.
Meanwhile, just a few hours later in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, more bad news was brewing for Samsung. Magistrate Judge Paul S. Grewal entered an order that flatly denied Samsung's request to present workarounds in the trial against Apple, which is scheduled to begin in six weeks. Samsung was required to submit some design-around code by December 31, 2011; but they only submitted some, not all, of the work-arounds. Since Samsung did not comply, Judge Grewal dropped a big hammer.
"Samsung may not offer any evidence of its design-arounds," Judge Grewal ruled. "This means no source code evidence, no non-source code evidence, no evidence of any kind, whether for liability purposes or any other purpose. Period."
The ruling, according to Mueller, opens Samsung up to a ton of potential liability claims, including possible "damages for products that never infringed, or for periods during which previously-infringing products were no longer infringing."
Things are not proceeding as I had forseen.
Of course, there was that big case in the Netherlands we have been reading about all day where Samsung won an infringement suit against Apple, right? Well, this looks like a case where the victory is more symbolic than anything, and the winner may end up being the biggest loser.
The Dutch court agreed with Samsung on one of the patents it was asserting against Apple, but dismissed the other three. And the patent that survived was one that Apple was not really contesting, but was only asking the court to set a fair royalty for them to pay to Samsung. In fact, Cupertino asked the court for that at least half a dozen times, but Samsung was looking for something bigger; the Korean company wanted a knock-out blow against Apple that it could use as leverage in all their other cases worldwide.
Well, Samsung is not going to get that from this trial, and what they are going to get from Apple is a reasonable sum in royalties that Apple was already willing to pay. Those royalties will be based only on the Netherlands market as well, which is not large enough to merit a huge check. The final amount is not determined yet, but based on previous rulings in this case it is not expected to even cover the huge bill Samsung now owes Apple in legal fees because of failing to prove the other three patents.
"The the impact of today's ruling is minimal," says Mueller. "The word minimal is more likely to be an exaggeration than an understatement."
So, yes, a courtroom win for Samsung, but one in which they gained no true leverage against Apple and will end up paying more in legal fees than the ruling is worth.
Boy, talk about your Pyrrhic victories.
Adrian writes the weekly Law & Apple column and the occasional feature story for MacLife.com. Follow him on Twitter, or subscribe to him on Facebook.
