After a year of litigation, which examined some 700 infringement
claims, the court in California ordered Samsung to pay more than $1
billion in damages.
The jury rejected claims by Samsung that several of its patents had been breached.
The verdict - which came after less than three days of jury
deliberations - could lead to an outright ban on sales of key Samsung
products and will likely solidify Apple's dominance of the exploding
mobile computing market.
Apple's victory is a big blow to Google, whose Android software
powers the Samsung products that were found to infringe on Apple
patents.
Google and its hardware partners, including the company's own
Motorola unit, could now face further legal hurdles in their effort to
compete with the Apple juggernaut.
Samsung lawyers were grimfaced
in the quiet but crowded San Jose courtroom as the verdict was read, and
the company later put out a statement calling the outcome "a loss for
the American consumer."
Apple upended the mobile phone business when it introduced the iPhone
in 2007, and shook the industry again in 2010 when it rolled out the
iPad.
It has been able to charge premium prices for the iPhone - with
profit margins of as much as 58% per phone - for a product consumers
regarded as a huge advance in design and usability.
The company's late founder, Steve Jobs, vowed to "go to thermonuclear
war" when Google launched Android, according to his biographer, and the
company has filed lawsuits around the world in an effort to block what
it considers brazen copying of its inventions.
The legal win came one year after CEO Tim Cook assumed the helm of the company.
Shares in Apple, which just this week became the biggest company by
market value in history, climbed almost 2% to a record high of $675 in
after-hours trade.
The verdict comes as competition in the mobile device industry
intensifies, with Google jumping into hardware for the first time with
its Nexus 7 tablet, and Microsoft's new touchscreen friendly Windows 8
coming in October, led by its "Surface" tablet.
Apple's victory could present immediate issues for companies that
sell Android-based smartphones and tablets, including Google's own
Motorola subsidiary, which it acquired last year for $12.5 billion, and
HTC of Taiwan.
Amazon - which has made major inroads into the tablet market with its
cheaper Kindle Fire - uses a modified version of Android for its Kindle
products but has not yet been subject to legal challenge by Apple.
