Full panel of US Court of Appeals reinstates $120M verdict Apple won against Samsung in a patent case
Context & Ripple Effects
This reverses the arc of the case: in February, a three-judge panel of the appeals court threw out the $120M jury verdict, ruling that Apple's patents covering slide-to-unlock and auto-correct were invalid. The full court has now taken the rare step of rehearing it and reinstating the award.
It also lands in a longer pattern between the two companies — last year the same appeals court trimmed Apple's $930M win by upholding the patent findings but rejecting trade-dress dilution. The full-panel reversal keeps the software-patent side of Apple's campaign alive.
First-order effects
- Samsung faces a revived $120M damages exposure on the slide-to-unlock and auto-correct patents after the full panel undid the February invalidation.
- Apple's software-utility claims are back in play, restoring leverage it lost when the earlier panel narrowed its win to nothing on these patents.
Second-order effects
- Samsung's likely next move is further review, extending a litigation cycle that has already run through multiple appeals rounds since the original verdicts.
- Rival handset makers watching the case face renewed risk that basic interaction features — unlock gestures, text correction — remain enforceable patent territory rather than free-to-copy prior art.
Third-order effects
- If the full court's willingness to reinstate software-feature patents holds, smartphone litigation shifts back toward feature-level claims, raising the value of early utility filings over design and trade-dress theories that courts have been cutting back.
The trend: Smartphone patent wars are consolidating around which software features count as protectable inventions, with full-court rehearings now resetting outcomes that panels had settled.