Roger Fingas
In its first case over design patents in some 120 years, the U.S. Supreme Court will tackle the outcome of the biggest Apple v. Samsung lawsuit on Tuesday, as Samsung looks to reduce the scope of damages owed.
Samsung will argue that it shouldn't have had to pay $399 million in damages ordered by lower courts, Bloomberg noted on Monday. The company has used the analogy of a cupholder in a car, suggesting that it wouldn't be fair to award the entire profits from a vehicle for something that makes just a partial contribution.
While Apple has acknowledged that in some cases a patent holder should only be able to collect profits linked to a specific component, it has also insisted that the patents in its case against Samsung were more equivalent to the design of an entire car, and that Samsung earlier failed to demonstrate that the patents applied to just parts of 11 infringing phones — all of which are no longer on sale.
The Supreme Court will have three basic options: upholding the damages, invalidating them, or ordering a retrial to decide the exact amount.
Samsung has already paid Apple the $399 million, along with a further $150 million for violating a "pinch-to-zoom" patent. Combined, though, both sums are already far lower than the more than $1 billion a jury initially leveled against Samsung. That figure was reduced severely in later legal proceedings.
The outcome of the Supreme Court fight could impact Apple's attempt to collect another $180 million, and possibly a recent U.S. federal appeals court ruling, which reinstated $119.6 million in damages for Samsung's infringement of a "slide-to-unlock" patent.
Marko Zivkovic
Christine McKee
Andrew Orr
Andrew O'Hara
William Gallagher
Mike Wuerthele
Bon Adamson
-m.jpg)
19 Comments
I understand Apple's position in this... The careful and expensive user interface design that Jobs put into his products is worth something. Maybe a LOT.
But, I am also conflicted about patenting functional aspects of anything. It is like an incandescent light bulb manufacturer saying nobody else can produce a product that produces light (even it is uses a different technology like LED or fluorescence).
There is no easy or obvious answers to these questions.
With no Scalia they'll probably remain neutral and kick it down to a lower court.
samscum is saying the iPhone is a cupholder? What a load of scumbags.I don't think Apple deserves a part of their profits I think they deserve 100% of their profits. Samscums intention was to copy Apple 100% as shown in their 132 page document they wrote on how to copy Apple pixel by pixel.