A jury has decided that Samsung must pay Apple $539 million in damages for illegally copying some of the iPhone's features to lure people into buying its competing products.
The verdict is the latest twist in a legal battle that began in 2011.
Apple contends that Samsung wouldn't have emerged as the world's leading seller of smartphones if it hadn't ripped off the technology powering the pioneering iPhone in developing a line of similar devices running on Google's Android software.
Previous rulings had already determined that Samsung infringed on some of Apple's patents, but the amount of damages owed has been hanging in legal limbo.
A jury convened for the original 2012 trial[1] had determined that Samsung should pay Apple $1.05 billion.
A jury in a 2014 trial[2] found that Apple had infringed on some of Samsung's patents, and decided Apple should pay approximately $158,400 in damages, while at the same time declaring that Samsung needed to part with $119.6 million.
Eventually, US District Judge Lucy Koh pegged the amount to be paid by Samsung as $548 million.
The issue was escalated to the US Supreme Court, which determined in 2016[3] that a lower court needed to re-examine $399 million of the $548 million.
That ruling was based on the concept that the damages shouldn't be based on all the profits that the South Korean electronics giant had rung up from products that copied the iPhone, because its infringement may only have violated a few patents.
Apple had argued it was owed more than $1 billion while Samsung contended the $399 million should be slashed to $28 million. The revised damages figure represents