Samsung verdict: The fallout for consumers

A federal jury in San Jose, Calif., ruled late Friday that South Korean tech giant Samsung, the world's largest maker of phones, had copied features of the iPhone and the iPad. That included the "bounce-back" behavior when a user scrolls to the end of a page and the ability to zoom in on an image by spreading two fingers.

The jury awarded Apple $1.05 billion in damages.

For now, here's what the verdict means for consumers:

Yes. The jury didn't prohibit sales of the devices. However, Apple asked a judge Monday to ban U.S. sales of eight Samsung devices. If the judge agrees, that would affect many Samsung devices, but not the most recent ones such as the Galaxy S III and Galaxy Note smartphones.

No. Samsung is challenging it and has vowed to take the fight all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary.

That's not likely. The verdict doesn't apply outside the United States and doesn't apply to the latest Samsung devices either.

Possibly. Samsung may have to pay Apple substantial royalties on each phone. Consumers will likely pay for that somehow, but it may not be noticeable in stores. Phone companies such as AT&T and Verizon Wireless already subsidize each smartphone by hundreds of dollars to get retail prices down to $99 or $199.

This doesn't directly affect phones that have already been sold, even if they are the models that the judge decides to ban.

Possibly. The jury dinged Samsung's flagship Galaxy line for copying the overall look and feel of the iPhone and for using the stock icons with rounded corners that come with Android, the operating system from Google that Samsung uses in the devices in question.

Most likely, makers of Android phones will take more care to make their phones distinguishable from the iPhone.