Full panel of US Court of Appeals reinstates $120M verdict Apple won against Samsung in a patent case
Bloomberg Anywhere Remote LoginBloomberg Anywhere Login — Appeals court said panel was wrong to toss verdict in February — Supreme Court to consider second Apple-Samsung case next week
Context & Ripple Effects
This reverses the arc of the year: in February, a three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals threw out the $120M jury verdict, holding two Apple patents covering slide-to-unlock and auto-correct invalid. The full court has now sided with Apple instead, reviving damages Samsung had stopped owing since that panel ruling.
It is also the second time the appeals court has trimmed and then reworked an Apple-Samsung award — in 2015 it upheld infringements from Apple's $930M win while sending $382M back for reconsideration. With the Supreme Court set to take up a second Apple-Samsung case next week, the litigation's center of gravity is shifting upward.
First-order effects
- Samsung is back on the hook for the $120M judgment unless it seeks further review, after eight months during which the February panel decision had erased its liability.
- Apple's slide-to-unlock and auto-correct patents regain enforceable status, restoring negotiating leverage the February invalidation had stripped away.
Second-order effects
- The dueling appellate outcomes across the two cases give both companies fresh incentive to keep litigating rather than settle, since each side can now point to a recent win at the same court.
- A Supreme Court ruling next week in the second case could reprice every outstanding claim between them, making the $120M award one input into a much larger settlement calculus.
Third-order effects
- If the Supreme Court narrows how design and software patents are enforced, the smartphone patent wars shift from repeated jury verdicts toward fewer, higher-stakes rulings that set industry-wide rules.
- En banc review becoming the tiebreaker between panels suggests multi-year smartphone patent disputes will increasingly be decided by full courts and the Supreme Court rather than trial juries.
The trend: Smartphone patent litigation is migrating from jury verdicts and three-judge panels toward full appellate courts and the Supreme Court, which are redrawing what mobile software and design patents are worth.