one judge said. “The defendant provided a bribe, knowing it was bribery to
support [the friend’s daughter], but was unable to refuse.”
The prosecutors had won a partial victory with the verdict, since Jay
Lee wasn’t completely off the hook. But the sentencing itself was a victory
for Samsung. Because Jay was cut some slack in terms of the bribery
charges, the court reduced his five-year prison sentence to two and a half
years. In addition, the judges commuted his sentence while upholding his
conviction for bribery and embezzlement. The other executives were also
given reduced, commuted sentences.
Jay looked stunned, Bloomberg reported, by the verdict. Despite
confirming his conviction for bribery, the court had decided the heir was
free to go, with the stipulation that he would be on probation for four years.
He blushed and exited the courtroom, and went to the hospital to see his
father.
“The past year has been a really valuable time of looking back on
myself,” Lee told reporters, his voice shaky at times.
—
FOUR MONTHS LATER, IN June 2018, after seven years since the start of the
Apple-Samsung lawsuits, both sides decided to call it quits. After a jury
ordered Samsung to pay Apple $539 million in damages, Samsung and
Apple agreed to an undisclosed settlement.
On paper, it looked like a victory for Apple. The courts had ruled
repeatedly that Samsung copied Apple’s patents and that Samsung was
required to pay damages to Apple. But Apple’s victory was pyrrhic. The
patent war had degenerated into a seemingly never-ending succession of
court battles and appeals over how much Samsung owed Apple in damages.
Finally, with the settlement, the appeals were finished.
“The smartphone patent wars are finally over,” declared The New York
Times.
“And if I had to characterize it, it didn’t really accomplish anything,”
Brian J. Love, a Santa Clara University law professor, told The New York
Times. “Close to a decade of litigation, hundreds of millions of dollars spent
on lawyers, and at the end of the day, no products went off the market.”