Apple demands $2.5 billion in damages from Samsung

As the patent soap opera between Apple and Samsung continues, Apple is now seeking $2.5 billion in damages from Samsung to settle in the U.S.

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In a filing made this morning, Apple claims Samsung was “unjustly enriched” by copying Apple’s designs to the tune of around $2 billion, and Apple estimates it also lost around $500 million in profits, FOSS Patents’ Florian Mueller reports.

“Samsung’s infringing sales have enabled Samsung to overtake Apple as the largest manufacturer of smartphones in the world,” Apple wrote in its filing. “Samsung has reaped billions of dollars in profits and caused Apple to lose hundreds of millions of dollars through its violation of Apple’s intellectual property.”

To be clear, the $2.5 billion figure is just Apple’s estimate. When Apple and Samsung duke it out in a California court later this month, the court may end up ruling for a radically reduced settlement.

As Mueller breaks it down, Apple calculated per-unit royalties to reach that massive $2 billion figure: $2.02 for the “overscroll bounce” feature, $3.10 for the “scrolling API,” $2.02 for “tap to zoom and navigate,” and $24 for any device that breaks an Apple trade dress right or design patent.

While Apple seems hellbent on stopping sales of Samsung’s past infringing devices, it’s more likely that Samsung will have to shell out quite a bit to settle the case. But even when this case gets resolved, there are still more than 50 other lawsuits between the companies happening around the globe. The two are also scheduled to go to trial in California again in 2014 (which led to that surprising Galaxy Nexus preliminary injunction).

Apple just recently won a preliminary injunction against the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 in Europe, and Reuter reports that the two companies failed to settle out of court because they couldn’t agree on the value of each other’s patents.

Photo: Heather Kelly/VentureBeat