Apple demands Samsung pays $40 per smartphone

Apple is demanding Samsung pays $40 per smartphone as damages following the biggest patent and trademark lawsuit in tech history.

Approaching two years since Cupertino won a US$1 billion verdict against its South Korean rival, the company has now issued new demands after the sum was reduced to less than $900 million after a re-trial on damages.

In the upcoming trial, Apple is seeking a patent style royalty rate, allowing the company to collect billion-dollar sums from Samsung every year, covering five patents.

Related to Apple’s phone tapping number feature, unified search, data synchronisation, slide-to-unlock, and autocomplete, Samsung lawyer Scott Watson dismissed the requests as “inconsistent.”

"The only reason Apple is bringing this motion is because the licensing data is completely inconsistent with the idea that anyone would pay $40 for five smartphone patents per unit," Watson told the court.

"Apple shouldn't be permitted to just throw up a huge number and then sit down and we've got our hands tied and we can't even show the jury that it's totally disproportionate to what actually happens in the marketplace.

"And I submit there's simply no Federal Circuit case, or even a district court case, where a court has excluded a license on the exact patents at issue... and the jury is not permitted to see that, and the defendant has to go to trial with no licensing evidence to show the jury at all."

According to Apple, the reason the numbers are so high is because the company has been allowed to incorporate data about what it believes are its "lost profits" into the royalty rate.