Samsung on patents: 'Apple doesn't own beautiful and sexy'

The Apple vs. Samsung patent-infringement retrial is winding up in the United States, with Samsung arguing its competitor's patents are much narrower than the company has claimed.

The trial, taking place in San Francisco, is in its final stages, with Samsung's attorney Bill Price making his closing statement yesterday. Price said that Apple tried throughout the trial to assert that its patents cover "all aspects of design and ease of use", preventing competing companies, like Samsung, from making devices that were attractive or easy to use.

Apple's patents are more limited than that, according to Price, and the company has tried to translate those narrow patents into directly representing the iPhone: "Apple has tried to mischaracterise these patents so they are the iPhone." However, he said, "These patents are very narrow… Apple doesn't own beautiful and sexy."

It has already been decided that Samsung infringed on Apple's patents, but the retrial is to determine the appropriate level of damages for the infringement. Samsung's attorneys are asking that the US$380 million patent infringement bill be cut to $US52 million.

Samsung claims that its products were altered to compete with the iPhone but that Apple had done the same thing in releasing the iPad mini after competitors' small-screen tablets. Price also said that Samsung's devices had unique selling points, like the Android operating system and larger screen sizes, and weren't sold based on their infringement of Apple's patents.

"Did you hear any evidence that anyone bought any of these phones because of the Apple patents?" Price asked in his closing statement. "What they're really saying in the market is 'justice' is 'just us'."

10.7 million Samsung devices were sold that infringed upon one or more of Apple's five key patents covered in the trial, netting the Korean company US$3.5 billion in revenue. The retrial jury is tasked with deciding how much Samsung should pay Apple for that infringement; if Samsung loses, it will be out of pocket US$328 million above the US$52 million it claims it owes.