Because of being the two biggest competitors in the markets, Samsung and Apple have always been fighting over customers as well as their copyright of phone features. Nonetheless, they both have losses and wins across the board in different aspects making it hard to determine whom the definite winner is.

In the recent court appeal, Apple seems to be winning this race. According to the court appeal, it states that some of the older editions of Samsung Galaxy phones have been equipped with features that were used exclusively on iPhones, which might have caused harms for Apple’s sales profits. Samsung was required to pay a sum of money of up to 120 million US dollars to make up for harms that they might have caused Apple.

On top of that, no only the court also wanted Samsung to compensate for Apple, but also wanted Samsung to remove these features from their software. Some of the features that were believed to be overlapping between the two big companies were slides-to-unlock, auto-correct, and the quick link ones.

“It’s an important precedent for Apple and any company that seeks to protect product differentiation,” claimed Nick Rodelli, head of CFRA Legal Edge, a US forensic, accounting, and legal research firm. “This broadens their moat here in the U.S. and makes it more difficult for new entrants to come into the U.S. market and rip off Apple’s features.”

These have been found to break the terms of the copyright. These overlaps could be found on Samsung ‘s 2011 flagships, Samsung Galaxy Note 2 and Samsung Galaxy S2. This might not cause great impact on Samsung’s sales profits and businesses, but this court ruling opens a new chapter to any companies who want their copyright to be protected and to not be copied by any other companies. This would draw a line for any two rivals whose products might be similar in some senses and to force the designers to come up with new ideas that won’t be overlapping between companies and line ups.