Sep. 12, 2013
John B. Quinn
See more on John B. QuinnQuinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP | Los Angeles | Practice type: Litigation
Though Quinn had never been in front of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit before, he didn't feel intimidated when he argued last year on behalf of Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. in one of the most nationally followed patent cases in recent history.
In the October 2012 decision, the Washington, D.C.-based Federal Circuit vacated a preliminary injunction obtained by Apple Inc. against Samsung, holding that the Cupertino-based technology giant failed to show it had lost market share due to Samsung's alleged infringement of Apple's "unified search" patent. Apple Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. et al., 12-1507 (Fed. Cir., filed July 6, 2012).
"Apple had to prove that customers were buying Samsung's Galaxy Nexus because of this feature, and that they were losing market share because of that," Quinn said. "That is a significant hurdle to show."
The patent at issue was the unified search capability that makes it possible to search and retrieve information from multiple databases on a phone, including contacts, the Internet and messages. It's used in Siri, the Apple iPhone's computerized personal assistant. Quinn argued that consumers likely wouldn't buy one smartphone over another for this function alone.
Smartphones typically contain hundreds of patented technologies, Quinn said, and consumers are unaware of many of them. The decision makes it more difficult for a company to justify an injunction because of alleged infringement on a single patent.
The opinion helped establish the legal standard for finding a causal nexus between patent infringement and the "irreparable harm" required to issue an injunction, Quinn said.
Though he played a role in one of the many precedent-setting cases of the Apple-Samsung saga, Quinn remains fairly low-key.
"That for me was an interesting and gratifying case to work on," he said. "It established some interesting points of law."
- ALEXANDRA SCHWAPPACH
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