Apple wants Samsung to pay a $40 license fee for every smartphone and tablet it sells after the South Korean company infringed five patents with a number of Galaxy-branded devices.

That’s right… just five patents, $40 for every device. It’s a pretty surprising demand — especially after Apple recently stated that monetary damages were “not an adequate remedy” for Samsung’s patent infringing ways.

FOSS Patents points out that’s around $8 per patent per unit — $10 per unit more than the $30 licensing free Apple proposed for an entire patent portfolio (not just a small handful of patents) when this lawsuit all started back in October 2010.

The five patents relate to aspects of unified search, data synchronization, slide-to-unlock, autocomplete, and a feature that turns phone numbers into tappable links.

$40 per unit to license these technologies would be “far out of the ballpark of anything that has ever been claimed or rumored to be paid in this industry for entire portfolios,” reports FOSS Patents’ Florian Mueller, who adds that the highest per-unit royalty estimate he’s seen “was in the $10 range.”

Apple would expect Samsung to simply add the cost to the price of its devices, making them more expensive and effectively passing on the fee to its consumers. The company argues that its demands are supported by real-world license deals, but it hasn’t disclose the deals it is referring to to the jury.

Samsung believes that no jury would ever award this kind of sum if it knew what the actual royalty rates in this industry are.

• SourceFOSS Patents