An American jury has ordered Samsung to pay $119.6m to Apple for smartphone patent violations, far less than Apple had sought and marking a big loss for the iPhone-maker in the latest round of the two companies’ worldwide litigation.

During the month-long trial in a San Jose, California, federal court, Apple accused Samsung of violating patents on smartphone features including universal search, while Samsung denied wrongdoing. According to an 8-person jury in the federal court, various Samsung phones and tablets, including the Galaxy S II and III, Galaxy Note, and Galaxy Nexus, infringed on three Apple patents. The jury awarded Apple $119.6 million USD in damages.

Meanwhile, the panel ruled that Apple violated one of two Samsung patents that the company had countersued over, but ruled the infringement was not willful and awarded only the $158,400.

Source: Recode

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Michael Bay makes a brief, awkward appearance at Samsung's CES press conference.

Transformer Director Michael Bay was blindsided by a malfunctioning teleprompter Monday afternoon while appearing on stage at Samsung's news conference at CES launching the new 105-inch curved UHD.



Unable to make a speech without the teleprompter, Bay became clearly agitated before fleeing in front of hundreds of reporters, leaving Samsung Executive Vice President Joe Stinziano alone on stage.

In a blogpost on the director's website, Bay said: "Wow! I just embarrassed myself at CES."

"I rarely lend my name to any products, but this one is just stellar," Bay said. "I got too excited to talk, that I skipped over the Exec VP's intro line and then the teleprompter got lost. Then the prompter went up and down -- then I walked off. I guess live shows aren't my thing."

He added that he was doing a "special curved screen experience with Samsung and "Transformers 4" footage that will travel the world.

Watch the video:

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Samsung Electronics Co., the world's biggest seller of smartphones to consumers now aims to win more corporate and government clients. But the South Korean technology giant needs some set of skills to face the new challenge of building a customer-service network to work with enterprises as well as a robust security platform satisfying the needs of the world's most-security-conscious network managers.



Samsung's security system for mobile devices, called Knox, has been reported to have delays and programming bugs, frustrating clients including the U.S. Defense Department. Samsung has acknowledged the problems and is now addressing the issues behind it. If the company can address the concern, it could be a good shot at wresting control of the enterprise device market from ailing BlackBerry, the Canadian smartphone maker which security features made it the gold standard for years among government officials and corporate executives.

For Samsung, fixing that perception has become a top priority. Selling more devices in the corporate businesses could help the company meet its ambitious target of doubling company sales by 2020. Samsung executives first identified the corporate smartphone market as a potential gold mine in 2011, as BlackBerry was rapidly weakening.



In order for Samsung to introduce Knox quickly across its devices, its chief technology officer had the new security platform integrated into every stage of phone development requiring an unusually high level of cooperation between the hardware engineers in South Korea and Samsung's software teams, many of whom work in the U.S. The idea behind Knox is to give corporate tech administrators control over their employees' Samsung devices. It also allows tech administrators to remotely shut down devices if they have been compromised or lost, and alerts administrators if it appears that a device's base code has been tampered with.

To be sure, few rollouts in the tech world are free of hiccups, and developers frequently run through several beta versions before delivering a final product. But Samsung's failings have been particularly vexing to U.S. government officials, who have been looking for government-approved alternatives to BlackBerrys for over a year, according to the people familiar with the situation.

In a statement released by Samsung, the company has received strong interest and positive feedback from its customers about Knox, adding that it is working with "several Fortune 500 and government customers" on deploying the security system and expected large scale success in 2014.

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The Samsung Group - a Korean company, on Tuesday said it is offering $1 million in aid to the Philippines.

South Korea's Yonhap News Agency said Samsung Group is making the donation through the Red Cross and World Vision Philippines.

In a report at a local news site ABS-CBN, Samsung Electronics Philippines Corporation is also sending a volunteer emergency team to help in the relief efforts in areas heavily affected by the typhoon. The 20-member team will provide free repair of home appliances.

Countries around the world pledge large amounts of international aid to Philippines after typhoon. The United Arab Emirates initiated the pledge for about half a billion pesos. The United Kingdom also contributed around Php 400 million . The latest in the list is the Vatican which contributed Php 6.5 million.

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Rockstar, the consortium that bought the Nortel patents for $4.5 filed patent lawsuits against huge mobile device manufactures including Google, Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, HTC Corp, Huawei and four other companies on Thursday before the U.S. District Court in Texas.  Rockstar is a consortium jointly owned by Apple, Microsoft, Blackberry, Ericsson and Sony.

Google is accused of infringing seven patents including the technology that matches Internet search terms with relevant advertising being the hub of Google's search business. According to Reuters, a Google spokesman declined to comment while representatives for Samsung, Huawei, HTC and Rockstar were all unreachable.

Samsung, HTC Corp and Huawei all manufacture mobile phones running on Google's Android OS which directly compete with Apple and Microsoft mobile products.

In 2011, Google placed an initial $900 million bid for Nortel's patents which was eventually increased its bid to reach the offering as much as $4.4 billion.  But after losing to Rockstar on the Nortel patents, Google acquired Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion driven by the latter’s patents. "Despite losing in its attempt to acquire the patents-in-suit at auction, Google has infringed and continues to infringe," the lawsuit said.

While Rockstar claims that Google’s patent infringement is wilful, Rockstar is now seeking for increased damages against the big G. The Google case in U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Texas is Rockstar Consortium US LP and Netstar Technologies LLC vs. Google, 13-893.

Source: Reuters

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