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In what is considered another turn of events in a legal battle that just keeps producing headlines, Judge Koh has reduced the fee Samsung have to pay Apple by almost half to $598.8 million.

Apple had been originally awarded $1 billion in damages for patent infringement by Samsung for a variety of aspects considered too similar between their Galaxy range and the iPhone. Of course Samsung appealed given the short amount of time it took for the jury to come to the verdict, together with the lack of technical expertise in the decision.

US District Judge Lucy Koh affirmed the remainder of the award, amounting to $598.9 million, in the blockbuster patent infringement case, while denying Apple’s request for an increase in damages.

The judge said that the initial calculation of the $1 billion fee was as a result of “an impermissible legal theory”, together with denying Apple’s appeal for increasing damages.

“This is an extremely careful and thorough opinion on a very difficult and interrelated set of issues,” Stanford Law School professor Mark A. Lemley said in an e-mail. “Samsung will get some reduction in the award, but almost certainly less than $450 million — we’ll need a new trial to figure that out.”

Portions of the damages awarded for patent infringement were excessive because they may have included compensation for infringement before Samsung was on notice that Apple owned the intellectual property.

Undoubtedly Apple will appeal the decision to reduce the damages, and Samsung still are appealing for the source code of iOS to definitively prove no infringement exists compared to their TouchWiz implementation of Android. However, Koh has advised that it may be necessary to put some of the appeals to a new trial in order to completely re-evaluate the entire case.

I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again – We haven’t seen the end of this case.

As the case has been appealed, Koh has said