Supreme Court sides with Samsung in Apple patent damages dispute

CNBC ^ | December 6, 2016 | By Anita Balakrishnan

[Swordmaker]

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled for Samsung in a dispute over damages related to Apple's iPhone design.

The ruling means that Samsung is not liable for all $399 million awarded to Apple in a previous lower court ruling for infringing on Apple's iPhone design. That figure represented profits from 11 Samsung smartphone models.

The dispute began in 2011, when Apple sued Samsung for copying design features of its devices, including, among other things, its colorful grid of app icons. Two lower courts ruled in Apple's favor on design-patent infringement.

That penalty is based on a federal law that says that a party copying and applying a patented design to "any article of manufacture" is liable "to the extent of his total profit."

Samsung countered that the penalty is disproportionate. Specifically, the South Korean giant says Apple is not entitled to total profits from the entire phone, but only the profit from the components that infringe.

The court agreed that focusing only on the end product sold to consumers was "too narrow." The terms of the law are broad enough to include either the profits of the final product sold to consumers, in the case of a simple product like a dinner plate, or a component of the product, in a more complicated product like an oven.

The justices in their 8-0 ruling sent the case back to the lower court for further proceedings.

"The question before the Supreme Court was how to calculate the amount Samsung should pay for their copying," Apple told CNBC of the ruling. "Our case has always been about Samsung's blatant copying of our ideas, and that was never in dispute. We will continue to protect the years of hard work that has made iPhone the world's most innovative and beloved product. We remain optimistic that the lower courts will again send a powerful signal that stealing isn't right."

[Republican Wildcat]

What smart phones don’t look like that? How could they not look like that?

“Cellular phones” still don’t look like that if they are not smart phones.

[publius911]

Good grief.

Good grief,indeed.

I was under the impression that an idea is never patentable...

Only the implementaion of the idea

[publius911]

That was why Congress, in its wisdom, wrote the law the way they did and specified ALL profits for design patents. They understood the difference. These Eight justices obviously do not.

Wisdom?
Congress??
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

That is true because Apple and their lobbyists could get to the legislators but not to the SC Justices.

I'm guessing that The Law, as Passed by Congress, was actually written in its entirety, by Apple.

Cronyism, anyone?

[Swordmaker]

Part of that still seems silly. “Screen that occupies most of the largest surface of the phone” borders on the obvious. So does touch screen, in fact, which predates smartphones altogether. Technology, more than design, drove this.

No, HiTech, it doesn't. Apple developed all of that. Touch screens existed before the iPhone but required styluses to work because they were resistance tech. Apple invented the mobile Capacitance multitouch screen, the technology to allow more than a single touch in a small screen, to figure out how to determine exactly where a finger with an average half inch area of contact really means to point—an aspect of finger pointing that took quite a bit of technological expertise and design work to develop, and then to exclude the noise— and then to eliminate all the extraneous input buttons traditionally used on other phones, not some other tech company, it was Apple, not Samsung, not LG, not Sony, not Google, not Nokia, not Microsoft, not any of the other cellphone makers, it was a company that had never made a cellphone before and instead decided to put a miniature computer with a SSD into a small package and then add on a phone. Putting all of these technology innovations together required a special mix of an operating system that none of the others could even begin to match for TWO TO THREE YEARS POST iPhone!

The iPhone was introduced in January 2007, but the first Android multitouch phone came out in late 2008 but with a lot of quirky glitches. A year later, updates to Android 1.5 finally added a touch screen keyboard and in November, 2009 pinch to Zoom was perfected and added to Android 2.0, something Apple had already perfected and patented before the iPhone was shown in January 2007. July 2009, with the introduction of the Samsung Behold, the first Android slab full screen multitouch phone without a manual keyboard appeared, almost three years post iPhone.

That was the kind of lead that Apple had on all of the others as they scrambled to match the technological lead that Apple had developed. . . so it was anything but "silly" when Apple developed that kind of technology. If it was so "obvious" where were the other cellular phones with full body multiple touch screens with on screen keyboards and minimal other manual buttons? Sorry, it was not "obvious" to make a mobile device design like that, especially with a glass screen. It became obvious only in retrospect three years later.

Don't you recall the ridicule heaped on Apple on the introduction of the iPhone? It was scathing from the traditional phone makers, especially about the lack of a keyboard!

[publius911]

Why are you such a jerk to everyone on here?

He's an Apple zombie.
That's what they do.

[Swordmaker]

Here is the iPaq 6360, circa 2001 that Apple stole ideas from.

ROTFLMAO!

Uh, no, here's the Apple Newton PDA circa 1987 (development start) to 1998 (Steve Jobs cancels Newton Line) from which all of the following resistance touch screen stylus devices stole their ideas from, in fact Compaq licensed the Newton patents from Apple, as did all the other PDA makers:

Apple Newton Message Pad introduced November 1997

Nice try, but no banana.

from Wikipedia:

The term PDA was first used on January 7, 1992 by Apple Computer CEO John Sculley at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada, referring to the Apple Newton.[6] In 1994, IBM introduced the first PDA with full mobile phone functionality, the IBM Simon, which can also be considered the first smartphone. Then in 1996, Nokia introduced a PDA with full mobile phone functionality, the 9000 Communicator, which became the world's best-selling PDA. The Communicator spawned a new category of PDAs: the "PDA phone", now called "smartphone". Another early entrant in this market was Palm, with a line of PDA products which began in March 1996. The terms "personal digital assistant" and "PDA" apply to smartphones but are not used in marketing, media, or general conversation to refer to devices such as the BlackBerry, iPad, iPhone or Android devices.

[itsahoot]

If the law intends the profit on the entire item in which the feature is included... then it should SAY so.

Actually the law does say that, the court just chose to ignore that. Big words like "Is" can confuse some people.

[itsahoot]

How about not putting in open ended terminology, for one thing?

Why did they just not void their patent? They did not do that they just removed the penalty for violating it.

[Swordmaker]

That is true because Apple and their lobbyists could get to the legislators but not to the SC Justices.

I'm guessing that The Law, as Passed by Congress, was actually written in its entirety, by Apple.

Uh, let's see. . . you guess is way off.

The Design Patent law was written in the 1840s. And the first Design Patent D1 was issued in 1843.

The US Supreme Court last revisited Design Patents in 1885 and agreed that ALL of the profits were to be award to the patent holder and for the last 131 years that is the way the courts have decided on Design patents.

The last revision to the section under question was made in 1952:

Section 289. Additional remedy for infringement of design patent

Whoever during the term of a patent for a design, without license of the owner, (1) applies the patented design, or any colorable imitation thereof, to any article of manufacture for the purpose of sale, or (2) sells or exposes for sale any article of manufacture to which such design or colorable imitation has been applied shall be liable to the owner to the extent of his total profit, but not less than $250, recoverable in any United States district court having jurisdiction of the parties.

Nothing in this section shall prevent, lessen, or impeach any other remedy which an owner of an infringed patent has under the provisions of this title, but he shall not twice recover the profit made from the infringement.

Apple was founded in 1977. Apple has not maintained a lobbying presence in Washington until Tim Cook because CEO.

Are you suggesting Apple has invented a time machine to send a non-existent lobbying team to 1843 or 1952?

You anti-Apple people are delusional.

[itsahoot]

Why are you such a jerk to everyone on here?

[arl295]

I don’t understand how this tactic helps Apple? Seems like it would do the opposite

[Swordmaker]

You might want to pay a little more attention to the words. "To the extent" creates an upper limit, not a lower one. It says the "total profit" is the maximum, not the minimum.

No, the word does not limit it. It says what it means. The upper limit in the law as written is ALL of their profits.

Section 289. Additional remedy for infringement of design patent

Whoever during the term of a patent for a design, without license of the owner, (1) applies the patented design, or any colorable imitation thereof, to any article of manufacture for the purpose of sale, or (2) sells or exposes for sale any article of manufacture to which such design or colorable imitation has been applied shall be liable to the owner to the extent of his total profit, but not less than $250, recoverable in any United States district court having jurisdiction of the parties.

Nothing in this section shall prevent, lessen, or impeach any other remedy which an owner of an infringed patent has under the provisions of this title, but he shall not twice recover the profit made from the infringement.

The word EXTENT means what it means. It means as far as it extends. i.e. as much as they made in profit.

In law, "extent" in legal sense means: "A writ, issuing from the exchequer, by which the body, goods, and lands of the debtor may all be taken at once to satisfy the judgment. It is so called because the sheriff is to cause the lands to be appraised at their full extended value before he delivers them to the plaintiff."

Several other legal definitions all revolve around "All' of the property, assets, or earnings.

In this instance, it would mean ALL of the profits earned. It does not mean "some of the profits earned," apportioned according to some arbitrary formula based on a percentage of valuation the design gives value to the final manufactured product.

Congress was quite explicit in its intent.

[The Truth Will Make You Free]

A lot of work went into creating those icons and the design to make multitouch work with fingers. Samsung and Android stole all of it. . . without compensation.

Yes, I read that recently Apple is making 106% of the profits in the smartphone space. So even though these companies stall Apple's work, together they are losing money (6%).

[Swordmaker]

Yes, I read that recently Apple is making 106% of the profits in the smartphone space. So even though these companies stall Apple's work, together they are losing money (6%).

Currently, with the condition of Samsung, it's up to 110%.

[mlo]

"No, the word does not limit it. It says what it means."

Yes it does, on both counts. It says what it means, and what it says limits the award. You respond as if I dispute what "total profit" means, or what "extent" means. I don't. What I'm explaining is that "total profit" is the upper bound, not the mandatory award.

It says "TO the extent of his total profit, but not less than $250". This means the award is between $250 and the total profit. It does not mean the award is a minimum of the total profit, or is mandatorily the total profit. It's an upper limit, not a lower one. The lower one is $250.

[ThunderSleeps]

SCOTUS reverses a big one - ANDROID PING!
Android Ping! If you want on or off the Android Ping List, Freepmail me.

---

My take on it... I'm no lawyer, but I have 30+ years of engineering experience. I'm no Apple fanboy, nor am I a Samsung fanboy. I do like Android, but Samsung is not Android. Seems like the justices decided to creatively re-interpret law, yet again. I wonder how far reaching the effects of this decision will be - on other patent cases.

[Swordmaker]

It says "TO the extent of his total profit, but not less than $250". This means the award is between $250 and the total profit. It does not mean the award is a minimum of the total profit, or is mandatorily the total profit. It's an upper limit, not a lower one. The lower one is $250.

Then the US Supreme Court should have had no problem with $399 million award as it was NOT the total profit for the devices under question, but only a portion of those total profits. They sent it back to be apportioned according to the law for UTILITLY PATENTS. . . rewriting the law as written for DESIGN PATENTS. Apple had originally asked for the law to be applied as written and the judge, applying the UTILITY PATENT LAW, impermissibly reduced it already from its original $1.1 billion jury award.

[TheBattman]

The decision isn’t what is shocking to me (though I agree that this represents more rewriting of the law, a no-no by constitutional measure), but the fact that it was an 8-0 decision... holy cow - how often does that happen, regardless of the case?

[TheBattman]

Hey Swordmaker - take a walk outside, find a nice, big, sturdy brick wall and begin banging your head against it. That will be no less productive than throwing verifiable, documentable facts at those who just simply hate Apple.

[Swordmaker]

Hey Swordmaker - take a walk outside, find a nice, big, sturdy brick wall and begin banging your head against it. That will be no less productive than throwing verifiable, documentable facts at those who just simply hate Apple.

You're right. The brick wall has a more open mind than the Apple haters.