
Samsung recently rested its case in the Apple vs. Samsung trial concluding its phase of the trial with a pair of expert witnesses who believe Apple could owe $421.8 million in royalties over five patents owned by the South Korean company.
The first witness called to the stand was expert Vincent O’Brien, who testified that his calculations show Apple owes the Galaxy maker $22.8 million based on three patent infringement claims according to Bloomberg. The patents in question were presented on Tuesday and cover mobile device usability features regarding photos, email attachments and playing music in the background. The $22.8 million figure was arrived at by estimating reasonable royalty rates based in part on previous Apple payouts. The South Korean company can’t claim its lost sales to the alleged infringement so royalties are the only avenue of calculating damages.
The second witness, who followed O’Brien’s testimony, was University of California, Berkeley professor David Teece. While on the stand, Teece said Apple’s alleged infringement of two separate Samsung patents relating to standards-essential UMTS patents could bring damages in the range of $290 million to $399 million. Royalty rates were calculated as 2% and 2.75% though how Samsung arrived at those numbers was unclear. In his cross-examination, Teece was presented with a letter from Samsung dated July 25, 2011 where the company proposed Apple pay a 2.4% royalty rate to license technology from any of 86 patents. Since the patents in question are deemed standards-essential, they should be licensed under fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms, but the 2.4% rate was never before levied to a licensee.
Samsung noted that it offered a fair and reasonable rate to “virtually every major player in the mobile phone industry,” but Apple rejected the terms and “to this day has not paid Samsung a dime for Apple’s use of Samsung’s standards-essential technology.” Apple claimed that the proposed royalty rate was “unfair, unreasonable, and discriminatory” in a pre-trial filing.
The Apple vs. Samsung trial continues with testimony from Apple witnesses intended to rebut the arguments that Samsung has asserted over the past week.
Source: Bloomberg
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