Apple, Samsung will hit appeals court in August
Computerworld is reporting that Apple and Samsung are headed to the US Court of Appeals where Apple will try and convince the court to issue an injunction regarding infringing Samsung products that relate back to last summer's Apple / Samsung case in California.
Apple and Samsung will appear before the court on August 9th and each side will present a 15-minute oral argument.
If you recall, Apple last summer was on the winning end of a US$1.05 billion judgement against Samsung, a figure that was subsequently reduced by $450 million on account of jury miscalculations.
Judge Lucy Koh, who oversaw the California case, considered, but ultimately opted not to issue an injunction for the Samsung products that were found to be infringing.
In December, Koh issued a ruling stating:
To the limited extent that Apple has been able to show that any of its harms were caused by Samsung's illegal conduct (in this case, only trade dress dilution), Apple has not established that the equities support an injunction.
So in light of that, Apple is off to the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, D.C. to argue otherwise.
The reality, however, is that any Appeals Court ruling, even if in Apple's favor, will have little discernable effect on the marketplace. The accused products from last summer's trial were effectively outdated during the trial. Now one more year has passed, and some of the accused Samsung products are no longer available for purchase.
In short, the legal system moves much slower than the rate at which Samsung releases new products. Tim Cook said as much himself when he appeared before a congressional hearing this past May.
I think the US Court system is currently structured in such a way that tech companies aren't getting the intellectual property protection they need. Our cycles are fast, the court system is very long and the foreign competitors in the US can quickly take IP and use it and ship products with it and they're to the next product as well. I would love to see conversations between countries and see protections between IP globally. For us, our intellectual property is so important, I would love the system to be strengthened in order to protect it.
Meanwhile, Apple and Samsung have yet another case brewing in the Northern District of California and that is scheduled to begin in early 2014.
