Apple v Samsung Headed to Fourth Jury Trial

The successive trials over five years have whittled down the amount Apple could collect to far less than they will have paid their lawyers. JL

Joe Mullin reports in ars technica:

Damages on disputed features like "pinch to zoom" will be re-calculated. Again.
In March or April of 2016, yet another jury will be summoned to federal court in San Jose to weigh in on the long-running dispute between the world's two biggest smartphone companies.
It's the fourth jury trial between Apple and Samsung in US District Judge Lucy Koh's courtroom, the judge noted in a scheduling order (PDF) published yesterday. The sole focus of the upcoming trial will be to calculate damages for infringement of Apple's patents in five Samsung products: the Fascinate, Galaxy S 4G, Galaxy S Showcase, Mesmerize, and Vibrant. It's the second retrial focused solely on damages.
Koh's recent orders suggest she is fed up with the intense litigation by both parties. The case docket for the first of two Apple v. Samsung lawsuits now has more than 3,200 documents in it, not including exhibits. Last week, Koh issued an order prohibiting the parties from making any further additions without permission.
"The Court will not allow supplemental fact discovery,"  Koh wrote in yesterday's scheduling order describing the upcoming trial. "The Court will not permit the parties to expand the scope of the damages retrial and will not allow the parties to rely on new sales data, new products, new methodologies, or new theories."
The trial will include 45-minute opening statements, one hour for closing statements, and six hours for evidence per side. Together with other factors like reading jury instructions, selecting an eight-person jury, and deliberations, Koh said she expects the trial to take no more than seven days.
The upcoming trial is necessitated by a May decision by the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which wiped out Apple's damages related to trade dress. In the new trial, a jury will have to make an award based solely on Apple's infringed patents. Those patents include three design patents, the '381 "bounce back" patent, the '163 "tap to zoom" patent, and the '915 "pinch to zoom" patent.
The parties are also arguing over whether Apple should get a partial final judgment for the portion of damages that was upheld, which the company calculates to be $548 million. Koh's order lays out a timeline for short responses and warns multiple times that "no further briefing may be filed" beyond what she allows.
Apple first sued Samsung in 2011, and a 2012 jury verdict put Samsung on the hook for $1.05 billion. That record-breaking verdict has been slashed down multiple times since then. A second jury trial awarded Apple $120 million, a still-substantial sum, but only about five percent of what Apple sought in that case.