Apple Vs. Samsung Patent War: Expert Says Korean Company Should Be On The Hook For $38.4M, Not $2.2B

During the ongoing patent infringement lawsuit in California between Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) and Samsung Electronics Co. (KRX:005935), the Korean company produced expert testimony on Monday to counter the iPhone-maker's claims for damages.

Responding to a Samsung lawyer’s argument that Apple’s multibillion-dollar figure is a “gross exaggeration,” Judith Chevalier, an economics and finance professor at Yale University in New Haven, Conn., told a federal jury in San Jose, Calif., that the Cupertino-based company should get only $38.4 million, instead of the $2.19 billion it has sought in damages for Samsung's alleged infringement of Apple's patents.

“My analysis compensates Apple through a reasonable royalty and...I have determined Apple has not lost sales as a result of Samsung's practice of the patents,” Chevalier said, according to CNET, and added that if Samsung has to pay anything to Apple, the amount should be 35 cents for each infringing device, an amount that is a fraction of Apple's demand for more than $40 a device in damages.

“We have to conclude that the differences in profitability across these products is being driven by something else other than the practice of these patents. The value created by these products is really negligible,” Chevalier said.

Chevalier was called on to contest a report produced for Apple by Christopher Vellturo, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology-trained consultant based in Boston. According to Vellturo, the $2.19 billion sought by Apple accounted for lost profits and reasonable royalties that the company should have earned on more than 37 million infringing products that Samsung was accused of selling between August 2011 and December 2013, Bloomberg reported.

Experts brought in by Samsung also recently presented studies in an attempt to prove that Apple was “elevating artificially the importance” of certain features covered by the five patents, AppleInsider reported.

After Chevalier's testimony, Samsung rested its defense case and proceeded to call witnesses for a countersuit, in which the company has accused Apple of infringing two of its patents and has demanded about $7 million from the iPhone-maker.