The Apple company escaped yesterday from a 533 million dollar lawsuit filed by the Smartflash LLC company more than 2 years ago. The trial was based on the fact that Apple would have violated certain patents for data storage in cloud systems, and a federal appeals court decided to cancel the initial verdict.
That verdict required Apple to pay $533 million to Smartflash LLC for infringing these patents, but now nothing will happen. Those from Smartflash also attacked application developers based on these patents, and although they reached separate agreements, the Apple company chose to fight.
The fight seems to have been successful, because now the courts are on that side and have canceled an extremely important verdict for those from Cupertino. The verdict dates from February 2015, so 2 years have passed since it was given and it has not yet been imposed, and based on yesterday's decision, it will never be imposed again, because it is unlikely that it will be validated again.
The Smartflash company initially demanded damages of 852 million dollars from the Apple company, but it was awarded 533 million dollars. In the end, it seems that Smartflash will not receive anything, at least for now, and remains with the court costs for an unfair fight against those from Apple.
"The trial judge vacated the large damages award a few months after a Texas federal jury imposed it in February 2015, but the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said on Wednesday the judge should have ruled Smartflash's patents invalid and set aside the verdict entirely . A unanimous three-judge appeals panel said Smartflash's patents were too "abstract" and did not go far enough in describing an actual invention to warrant protection."
