The United States Patent and Trademark Office has rejected a specific part of Apple’s autocorrect patent that Samsung was found to have infringed. This makes it likely that the $119,625,000 in damages awarded by the court to Apple could be reduced.
The trial found that Samsung infringed three of the five patents Apple claimed, including a specific element of its auto-correct patent which described a particular method of offering corrections or completions. Samsung had unsuccessfully argued at trial that this approach had been used by others before Apple, and therefore could not be patented. The court rejected this argument, but the USPTO has now agreed with Samsung.
The $119,625,000 in damages the court awarded Apple – far below the $2 billion Apple had been looking for – is now likely to be reduced, now that the patent that one of the three successful claims was based on has been declared invalid.
Apple and Samsung agreed earlier this week to drop all patent lawsuits outside the United States. However, legal battles between the two are expected to continue stateside.
