Samsung debuts the 128GB Black Pearl Galaxy S7 Edge

As usual Samsung will equip one of its AMOLED displays – a screen choice that will be followed by Apple’s next iPhone, many industry watchers reckon.

Among the reports surfacing about the Samsung Galaxy S8, the latest claims that the phone will most likely have an “all-screen design”. But on Tuesday, the nation’s highest court determined that Samsung should not be subject to an 1887 law that would require it to surrender all profits from infringing devices to Apple and, instead, has sent the case back to a lower court in order to determine final damages.

The ruling will prolong a legal tug-of-war between the two largest smartphone producers in the world that began in April 2011 when Apple sued Samsung for violating its patents and copying the design of its iPhone, seeking $2.5 billion in damages. Samsung has repeatedly made it clear that all Note 7 devices need to be returned by sending notifications to all remaining devices and even pushing an OTA update that limits the charging capacity of the phone.

“Both the companies ask us to go deeper and determine whether the relevant piece of manufacture is the particular smartphone element or the whole smartphone itself”, Justice Sonia Sotomayor commented in the judgment. Design patents are rare and a design patent case has not been filed in over a century in the Supreme Court.

It’s a new precedent for cases of patent infringement.

The case also marked a rare instance of the Supreme Court weighing on design patents, with potential repercussions for other businesses going forward.

[1] Samsung Electronics Co.et al. v. Apple Inc. Here, the Supreme Court sent the case back to the lower court to further develop that issue. These include the black rectangular front face with rounded corners and its 16-icon colorful grid. Samsung said that the ruling is a landmark decision that is a win for the company and “for all those who promote creativity”.

Rob Enderle, director of technology research firm the Enderle Group, said the court’s ruling “is pro-competition and pro-development and anti-patent troll” because the earlier ruling would have put any firm found compromising on a single patent in a complex technology device potentially liable for all the profits from the sale of that product. The case is not yet over as the lower court has been tasked to reevaluate the amount of the damages. In December 2015, Samsung paid its Cupertino, California-based rival $548 million.

The U.S. has offered protection for ornamental designs that appear on only a part of an overall product or article. “In the case of a design for a multi-component product, such as a kitchen oven, identifying the “article of manufacture” to which the design has been applied is a more hard task”. The company will be celebrating the 10th anniversary of the iPhone and hopes to use that milestone to introduce an all-new iPhone that kickstarts a frenzied cycle of sales and upgrades.