Samsung, together with its lawyers, will have to fork out a little more cash following its loss in its second patent battle with Apple. A court has fined lawyers Quinn Emanuel and Samsung a total of $2M for misusing confidential details of a patent deal struck between Apple and Nokia.
The documents were supplied by Apple to Samsung’s lawyers purely so that it could see that Apple was telling the truth about its patent deals with other companies. The documents were marked “for attorney’s eyes only” and were not to be revealed to Samsung executives.
Samsung later quoted exact terms of the deal in its own negotiations with Nokia, proving that it had access to the documents and that the court order had been breached.
The court found Quinn Emanuel demonstrated “(1) failure to institute sufficient safeguards for third-party confidential information, and (2) failure to comply with the notice and cooperation requirements set forth in Section 18(a) of the protective order entered in this case.”
With the limited exceptions described above, the court finds that the remaining costs and fees requested by Apple and Nokia are reasonable and shall be awarded. No later than 30 days from this order, Samsung and QE are to pay Nokia a total of $1,145,027.95 and Apple a total of $893,825.77 in fees and costs.
In the original trial, Samsung was found to have infringed on three of the five patents Apple claimed, and awarded damages of just under $120M. Apple was also found to have infringed some Samsung patents, and was ordered to pay $158,400.
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