Apple Lawsuit: US Judge Vacates $533 Million Ruling Against Apple, Inc.
Apple Inc. has successfully persuaded a federal judge to throw out a lawsuit that had originally ruled in favor of the plaintiff, Smartfish LLC, on Feb. 24.
The lawsuit was for infringement on three patents the Texas-based Smartfish held on software that was being used by the tech giant Apple's iTunes platform. The suit had been awarded to Smartfish in the amount of $532.9 million, based off a jury's decision that the iPhone maker did indeed violate Smartfish's patent and awarded the final sum to the small Texas company.
But Apple has now persuaded a federal judge on Tuesday to throw out the victory against them based off claims that the jury failed to properly calculate the award amount based off the judge's initial instructions.
Apple's claim was that the damages were too high, and the award amount was improperly figured by the jury per the judge's specific parameters. Those instructions were to consider the market value of the unpatented portion of the software, not the portion that was Apple's own.
A new trial has been set in Smartfish's hometown of Tyler, Texas, on Sept. 14. This trial will be held on the issue of award amount, or damages, to determine what amount the small company is owed by Apple.
Apple had recently been lobbying for Congress to curb the rights of litigation that small company's can enforce over bigger companies like Apple when it comes to patent infringement.
The original amount of the lawsuit by Smartfish was actually for $852 million.
A report on Fortune claims that Smartfish is a "no products," shell company that cast the suit over Apple and also quoted an Apple spokesperson in regards to the lawsuit.
"Smartflash makes no products, has no employees, creates no jobs, has no U.S. presence, and is exploiting our patent system to seek royalties for technology Apple invented. We refused to pay off this company for the ideas our employees spent years innovating and unfortunately we have been left with no choice but to take this fight up through the court system," Apple told Fortune.
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