Apple and Samsung have been locking horns over patent dispute that goes back to 2012. Yesterday, the US Supreme Court heard appeal from both the smartphone giants over the patent row.
Apple had sued Samsung for copying design features of its devices, and other software features. In December last year, the federal court had ordered Samsung to pay Apple $548M for infringing company’s smartphone patents following which Samsung filed a request with the Supreme Court asking it to re-examine the decisions made in the patent infringement lawsuit against Apple.
A lower court found that Samsung infringed three of Apple’s design patents viz, iPhone’s rectangular face with rounded edges, it’s bezel edge frame and a home screen populated by apps arranged in a grid. The $548M amount comes from the total profits Samsung garnered from eleven of its handsets that ripped off Apple’s iPhone design. Now it is upto the Supreme Court to decide exactly how much money Samsung must pay in this row. Samsung argued in the SC that the damages awarded should be reduced because Apple was awarded damages on the profit of the entire phone and not just the profits on the parts that infringed Apple’s patents.
Samsung said in a statement,
Awarding all of the profits for a single patent devalues the contributions of the hundreds of thousands of other patents in a smartphone. We are hopeful that the Supreme Court will give a sensible and fair reading to the design patent statute. That would be a win for businesses and consumers alike. With more design patents than anyone else in the United States, design has always been an integral part of Samsung.