No Change Yet
Posted by Clark Bunch on September 4, 2012
Have you heard the one about Samsung paying off Apple in nickels? Samsung, responding out of spite to the court ruling in California, supposedly sent 30 dump trucks filled with nickels to Apple, paying off their $1.05 billion penalty in small change.
In the first place, this verdict was only recently handed down and nothing in our legal system moves so quickly. It will be months, years, or possibly never before Apple sees that money. Samsung will first ask the court to throw out the ruling, then appeal, and so the process continues. In the second place, 30 dump trucks wouldn’t do it. The U.S. mint didn’t stamp out $1 billion worth of nickels in all of 2011. You would just about have to gather all the nickels currently in circulation to find $1 billion worth. If (really big if) you get that many, it would take nearly 3,000 18-wheel trucks loaded down with 40 tons in each one.
Samsung has yet to pay Apple anything, if they ever do. And it won’t be in nickels.
