As smartphone manufacturers go to battle in court, accusing each other of infringing upon their patents, we inevitably hear someone raise the question of why these companies just don’t save themselves a lot of trouble and pay the relevant patent licensing fees in the first place. The situation’s often not quite that simple, but it does raise a good point: just what kind of money are we talking about here? It would seem silly to risk an injunction against your phone over a quarter-cent per unit license, after all. In some of the latest settlement filings between Samsung and Apple, we get a look at just what Apple thinks some of its patents are really worth.

In these documents, Apple asks for a lot, including compensation for lost sales due to Samsung’s actions. It also mentions a few figures for just what kinds of patent royalties it feels would be appropriate to levy against the continued sales of infringing Samsung devices.

For the use of its patents dealing with “tap to zoom and navigate” and “overscroll bounce” behavior, Apple wants about $2 per patent, per device. It thinks that its “scrolling API” patent is worth even more, and wants Samsung paying $3.10 per Android.

The real kicker is for Samsung models that copy Apple’s product design, as protected by Apple’s design patents. For every unit Samsung churns-out that mimics Apple’s style, Apple wants to be paid $24.

Apple defends these figures with the results of a survey it commissioned that claims Apple patents add enough value to generic Androids that customers would pay a premium of nearly $100 for such products.

Source: FOSS Patents
Via: BGR