Samsung agrees to pay Apple $548m in patent dispute

Despite the huge payout, the dispute is still far from over

The huge sum was reduced from over $2 billion, the original amount of damages requested by Apple (Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)

Samsung has finally agreed to pay Apple $548 million (£352 million), partly settling a dispute over the alleged unauthorised copying of patented technology relating to how the companies' phones look and work.

In a statement issued to a California court by both companies, it was announced that the South Korean electronics manufacturer Samsung would pay the $548m before 14 December if it received an invoice from Apple before the weekend.

The payment should at least partially settle a dispute which has been going on since 2011, when Apple sued Samsung for allegedly copying patented Apple technology, such as pinch-to-zoom features, scrolling styles and the overall appearance of the phone and its interface.

Apple asked for $2.525 billion in damages, a huge sum that included a portion of the profits that Samsung made from their products that allegedly infringed copyrights.

The battle over this claim has gone on ever since, and the overall dispute has taken place in courts all over the world and contained numerous counter-suits and injunctions.

The huge damages sum was reduced to just over $1 billion in a 2012 US court case, and in other cases since then, the sum has been further reduced to $548 million, which Samsung has agreed to pay.

However, this isn't the end of it - in the statement, Samsung said it resrved the right to get its millions of dollars back in future if there are further developments, a right Apple disputes.

Samsung has also previously said it wants the case to be reviewed in the US Supreme Court, and the US Patent and Trademark Office has come under scrutiny recently after an internal examination questioned whether some of Apple's patents should have been awarded in the first place.

So even though over half a billion dollars could be changing hands fairly soon, the dispute between the two tech giants is far from over.