US Supreme Court sides with Samsung in patent fight with Apple

The decision is the latest turn in a seemingly endless infringement war Apple and Samsung have waged since 2011 over allegations that each side’s iOS and Android devices copied the other. But they did not provide a road map to juries and lower courts on how to navigate similar disputes in the future. Apple argued consumers buy smartphones based on the whole design, not individual components, and that the law says infringers must pay out the products profits as damages. An earlier damage award totaling $399 million is likely to be reduced under reconsideration.

The Supreme Court is now sending the case back to the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to reevaluate how much Samsung is supposed to fork over. “The lower court’s interpretation of design patents, which allowed someone to sue based on an ornamental feature and reap the entire profits of someone else’s product, would have had a chilling effect on investment and the development of products – especially in the tech sector”. Thus, Samsung should not pay all of the smartphones’ profits to Apple. The court ruled that Samsung would not have to cough up hundreds of millions of dollars in penalties for copying a design of the iPhone on its Galaxy phones.

It was the first decision from the Supreme Court pertaining to design patents in more than 120 years, and it is expected to resonate in the field of copyright law. Basically, it has to do with the way damages are calculated in cases involving patent design infringement.

But Samsung rejected the notion of applying damages based on total profits and filed a writ of certiorari in December past year. We hold that it is not [.] This case requires us to address a threshold matter: the scope of the term “article of manufacture”.

This is a crucial court decision for Samsung, which is now dealing with a wide range of problems, including a damaged reputation due to exploding smartphones.

In court, Samsung, Apple, and the USA government agreed that the term could mean an element, Reuters reports.

Samsung argued it should not have to relinquish all its profits, saying design elements were minor contributions to a product that involves thousands of patents.

FILE – In this October 21, 2016 file photo, a Samsung Electronics’ Galaxy S7 is displayed as customers wait in line to buy Apple’s iPhone 7 at a mobile phone shop in Seoul, South Korea. Now, a lower court will rule the exact amount Samsung has to award Apple.