Samsung's Plan to Keep Its Phones on the Market

Rebecca Greenfield

Following its patent lawsuit victory, Apple might want to take your Samsung device off the market, but Samsung has vowed to take "all necessary measures" to prevent that from happening. To do this, the Apply copy-cat has three options, according to a spokesperson talking with The Wall Street Journal's Evan Ramstad: Filing to stop the injunction, appealing if the judge grants it, and modifying products. For now, it sounds like the company is first trying to contest the verdict by pointing to rulings in its favor in some of the other 8 countries that it is fighting this same battle, according to The Agence France-Presse. That seems like a reasonable course of action that might work, considering the inconsistencies among the jury's findings working in Samsung's favor. Plus, that process will take long enough that Samsung won't have to comply with the injunction, a patent lawyer told The New York Times' Nick Wingfield.  But, if that doesn't pan out, the company has at least two work-arounds for software patents that it can employ to get its products up to Apple's standards. (It's apparently already doing this, a source told WSJ's Jessica Vascellaro, she tweeted.) But that is a "last resort," an anonymous Samsung official told AFP. 

RELATED: Samsung Seems Happy to Play Victim to Apple

Even if the company is successful in overruling the injunction, some have argued that it doesn't matter, with the "damage already done." Over at ExtremeTech Joel Hruska has a list of the "most significant potential impacts." Of course, things will be far worse for Samsung if Apple's request goes through. Though no longer top tier phones, the smartphones in question accounted for $1.3 billion of Samsung's sales, per WSJ's Ramstad. And they made up about 10 percent of the entire U.S. smartphone market last quarter. But, we're getting way, way ahead of ourselves. The court hasn't even looked at the list of contraband and will do so September 20. At that point we will have a better idea of the legal state of your Samsung product.