This is the second case Samsung has won since the two smartphone companies began battles over patent infringement in the past few years. As such, Samsung doesn’t have to pay Apple anything, but the court also found that Apple infringed a minor Samsung patent, for which it awarded Samsung $158,400.
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The Appeals Court found Samsung wasn’t infringing on the quick links patent, and declared the slide-to-unlock and autocorrect patents invalid, according to Reuters.
The rulings, by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, mean Samsung phones can continue to use the features.
A Federal Circuit panel in September said Apple was entitled to a narrow order that would have forced Samsung to remove the slide-to-unlock and other features that were found to infringe the Apple patents. Apple’s patent for the quick-links feature uses an analyzer server for detecting structures in the data and for linking actions to the detected structures. A jury in 2014 awarded $120 million.
NASDAQ:AAPL) lost a patent dispute against Samsung Electronics (KRX: 005930) after the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington overturned a $119.6 million jury verdict against the South Korean electronics manufacturer. Samsung is now waiting to see if the U.S. Supreme Court will hear its appeal. The monetary decision will barely register for either company, as Samsung made a $5.05bn profit last quarter and Apple reported $18.4bn.
Apple originally sought $2 billion in the case.
Friday’s ruling also awarded Samsung reimbursement for its legal costs for the appeal.
When Apple first started suing Samsung several years ago, what it really wanted to do was stop Samsung from shipping key Android phones and get the hardware maker to change the way it designed products.
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Samsung had a counterclaim related to video compression.
