Jury orders Samsung to pay Apple $533 mln in iPhone case

A federal court jury on Thursday ordered Samsung to pay Apple $533 million for copying iPhone design features in a patent case dating back seven years.

Jurors tacked on an additional $5 million in damages for a pair of patented functions. The award appeared to be a bit of a victory for Apple, which had argued in court that design essentially was the iPhone.

The case was sent back to the district court following a Supreme Court decision to revisit an earlier $400 million damage award. The jury essentially split the difference between Apple’s request for $1 billion and Samsung’s argument for $28 million.

To arrive at a damages award of more than a half-billion dollars, jurors would likely have needed to buy into Apple’s reasoning that design was so integral to the iPhone that it was essentially the “article of manufacture.”

The lower figure sought by the South Korean consumer electronics titan would have involved treating the design features as components.