Samsung and Apple have been seeing each other in the court room for several years now, due to a patent infringement lawsuit that the latter one made against Samsung, resulting to a long lasting legal dispute with countless plot twists and turn arounds.
Now, Samsung has agreed to pay Apple $548 million in damages, a move that follows the rejection last month, by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit of a full bench hearing, in order to review the damages conflicted in the patent dispute, in the light of new information about one of Apple’s patents.
According to a joint case management statement in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, San Jose division that was filed on Thursday, Samsung has guaranteed to pay all debts within 10 days after the iPhone maker sends the respective invoice.
However, at the same time, the Korean tech giant has also claimed the right of reimbursement in case any new findings come to light, including results of proceedings before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office addresses the patents at hand. And, of course, Apple has disputed that right as well.
Furthermore, just for the record, in the spring of 2011, Cupertino initiated litigating against Samsung in patent infringement suits, while Apple and Motorola Mobility were already engaged in a patent war on several fronts.
Apple’s multinational litigation over technology patents quickly gained reputation across the mobile industry and was dubbed as “smartphone patent wars“.
By August 2011, Apple and Samsung were litigating 19 ongoing cases in nine countries; by October the legal disputes expanded to ten regions and, when July 2012 came, the two companies were still embroiled in more than 50 lawsuits around the globe.
Currently, there are still several open disputes between the two smartphone makers and since this is not the first time that Samsung is paying damages to Apple after losing patent infringement lawsuit, we guess it won’t be the last one either.
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