A recent The Recorder story, “Koh Pares Apple’s Bill of Costs,” reports that U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh has made it official: Apple is the prevailing party in its titanic smartphone trial against Samsung.  Winning a $1 billion jury verdict will do that to you.

Samsung Electronics Co. and its counsel at Quinn Emanuel had argued that the 2012 verdict represented only a “partial recovery” so that neither side should be awarded costs.  Koh disagreed, saying in an order she was “not persuaded by Samsung’s effort to minimize the degree to which Apple prevailed in this litigation.

She did, however, slice Apple Inc.’s request for $6.2 million in taxable costs down to $1.8 million, saying Apple had overreached and underdocumented in seeking reimbursement for deposition transcripts, photocopies, e-discovery, and trial graphics and demonstratives.

The biggest hit came on Apple’s $1.5 million request for the cost of “blowbacks,” printed copies of electronic files.  Apple and its counsel at Morrison & Foerster and Wilmer Culter failed to document whether the blowbacks were produced for discovery or for their own witnesses.  “Given the lack of appropriate documentation, the court denies Apple’s request for copying costs in its entirety,” Hoh wrote.

Similarly, Koh disallowed about half of the $1.6 Apple billed for graphics and demonstratives, saying it wasn’t clear all of them were used at trial.  Claiming to have uploaded more than 2 million documents to a content repository, Apple sought to shift $1.4 million in e-discovery costs to Samsung.  Koh reduced the figure to $238,000 based on the number of documents Apple actually produced to Samsung.

Deposition transcripts raised a tricky area of law.  “Courts across the Northern District have struggled to interpret Civil Local Rule 54-3(c)(1),” Koh wrote.  She concluded that Apple was entitled to the cost of deposition transcripts and video, but not additional expedited online transcripts.

Finally, one of the few areas of agreement between the bitter smartphone rivals fell into dispute when it came to costs.  Apple and Samsung had agreed to share the cost of an interpreter at the trial.  But after prevailing, Apple had moved to recover its half of the $11,900 cost.  The court concludes that the lack of detail regarding the cost-sharing agreement—and particularly the lack of detail concerning whether the parties specifically intended for the agreement to be only temporary—weighs in favor of denying the cost,” Koh wrote.