Roger Fingas
The U.S. Supreme Court will hear a Samsung appeal in the legal battle over how much it owes Apple for infringing iPhone patents, it was revealed on Monday.
The nation's highest court issued a written order saying they would review a lower court's ruling that Samsung must pay Apple millions of dollars for patent infringement, as noted by The Wall Street Journal. The decision is a win for Samsung, which had appealed to the Supreme Court in hopes of reducing its damages.
Apple had hoped the Supreme Court would not review the case. In its own filings, it argued that the lower court had appropriately assessed fines against Samsung for its infringing products. The company went as far as calling the case "legally unexceptional."
In question is a $548 million patent infringement settlement that Samsung was slapped with. Samsung formally appealed that decision in December of last year. The ongoing legal battle first began five years ago before the settlement was reached.
For its part, Samsung has argued that modern devices like smartphones are not dependent on design for their functionality. According to Samsung, electronic devices "contain countless other features that give them remarkable functionality wholly unrelated to their design."
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35 Comments
Is Obama's judge already in place? ;-) I'm not fully up-to-date...
Didn't they just deny reviewing the ebook case Apple was asking for a review of? So, they are clearly anti-Apple all of a sudden. I wonder why that might be?
The US Gov't currently hates Apple. I wouldn't be surprised if Apple ends up owing Samsung for "creating a design which would knowingly be copied".
This is highly suspicious in my view.
"wholly unrelated to design"
The problem is Samsung was caught copying the "look and feel" of the iPhone off of a literal roadmap of Apple UI, but the laws are weak on trade dress and design. Even though I believe that Apple has an "identity" that Samsung has attempted to copy, in hardware, software, Ui, even advertising, the SC will probably come down on existing precedent.
Why did Samsung copy the "look and feel"? Because it gave them an advantage in the Android market. The only punishment they will receive is a continued decline in smartphone profits.
The market has taken care of this, not the legal system, but it doesn't change my opinion of Samsung as blatant copiers, not just of Apple, but other leaders in consumer products.