The patent litigation battle between Samsung Electronics and Apple Inc. saw a new twist Wednesday with Apple agreeing to limit the term for one design patent it used to win its $1 billion jury verdict against Samsung.

Foreign news outlets said the Cupertino-based firm filed a “terminal disclaimer” with the U.S. patent office that limits the term of its design-related patent, which Samsung claims is too similar to another patent owned by Apple.

The move comes as Apple may have been deeply impacted if the controversial patent named “D618,677” was invalidated.

The damages for Samsung products that have been ruled to have infringed on Apple’s “D618,677” patent numbers up to $520 million, nearly half of the $1.05 billion jury verdict.

Apple is giving up 16 months of the patent life of “D618,677” ― a patent that 12 different Samsung phones were found to have infringed. The patent, along with the similar patent called “D593,087” will now be effective until 2023.

The “D618,677” patent shows an illustration of the surface of an iPhone with rounded corners. The biggest difference between the patent and another called “D593,087” is that the surface of the electronic device in the previous patent is illustrated in black.

“D618,677 and embodiments of D593,087 (particularly the sixth embodiment) depict the same design; the only elements added by the D618,677 are the color black and oblique lines, features that do not make D618,677 a separate invention, distinctly different and independent,” Samsung officials said earlier in its post-trial motion.

Industry insiders say that the filing of the “terminal disclaimer” may not look like a big sacrifice for Apple, but it shows that the U.S. firm feels threatened by Samsung’s argument that the two should not be considered separate patents.

A motion hearing involving the Samsung-Apple patent battle is set to be held at a San Jose court on Dec. 6.

By Cho Ji-hyun (sharon@heraldcorp.com)