Week 11 - Post 2: Apple Defeats Samsung in Claim Construction

     

        The second article that I read today was about how last Wednesday in a case of Apple vs. Samsung in California,  a claim construction order was issued by judge Lucy Koh that puts Apple in a position to defeat Samsung at trial next year.  It is rare for one party to have an edge to such a complete extent as does Apple at this point, and considering the state of affairs, it is highly unlikely Samsung will be able to effectively fight back the lawsuit.  Specifically, Apple "prevailed on each and every disputed term in its own patents..." in such a way that the court adopted Apple's claim construction without any modification.  Samsung's efforts to both narrow and broaden certain elements of the construction were all tossed out because they weren't supported by "patent specifications, prosecution history, or extrinsic evidence."  Samsung only succeeded with one patent, a "method and apparatus for performing non-scheduled transmission in a mobile communication system for supporting an enhanced uplink data channel."  Finally Samsung has two non-SEP's that it will struggle to prove Apple infringed upon.
        Not only will Samsung struggle to prove non-infringement on Apple's four patents, but their only success with the SEP patent will likely cause Apple little harm, as Samsung has a FRAND-licensing obligation that will limit the damages Apple has to pay, and there would be no injunction.  Also, Samsung has a terrible track-record when it comes to proving non-SEP's in court, and Apple successfully added several limitations to the interpretation of these two patents.  Thus it would seem that Apple is on track to come out ahead of Samsung at this point, and I would be surprised if Samsung continued to pursue this engagement with Apple.  I predict Samsung will settle with Apple because at this point the possibility of facing serious damages is very high for Samsung, and they themselves have little to win against Apple.

Link: http://www.fosspatents.com/2013/04/apple-defeats-samsung-in-california.html