Judge Koh Reduces Apple's Damages Award vs. Samsung by $450 Million

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It's been a while since we have heard any news about the Samsung vs. Apple patent war. While we aren't too broken up about that, a new development is definitely worth sharing. Judge Lucy Koh recently made a new ruling in the case in which she reduced Apple's $1.05 Billion dollar damage award by $450 Million dollars. This brings it down by almost half to a grand total of $598.9 million. The reason she did this was because the jury based its decision on an incorrect legal theory. Here's a quote with the details,

A witness for Apple whose testimony the jury relied on “presented a theory that the court had ruled legally impermissible,” Koh said in her ruling. The judge said despite her explicit instruction that the theory couldn’t be used, “the amount of the award made plain that the jury had applied the impermissible theory anyway.”

Samsung, of course, was happy with this new ruling, but vows to press on in an attempt to reduce the ruling even further. Here's a quote,

“We are pleased that the court decided to strike $450,514,650 from the jury’s award,” Nam Ki Yung, a spokesman at Suwon, South Korea-based Samsung, said in an e-mailed statement today. “Samsung intends to seek further review as to the remaining award.”

It seems like a bit of time and level-headed thinking is slowly witling away that ridiculous victory for Apple. Since some of Apple's patents related to this case were later found to be invalid, it will be interesting to see how it all ends. That won't happen until sometime next year.

Source: Bloomberg