including, among other things, its colorful grid of app icons. Two lower courts ruled in Apple's favor on design-patent infringement.
Good grief.
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.
Apple patented the look and appearance, placement, concept. These all said to the consumer "Apple iPhone." Samsung's top management specific in that 132 page memorandum to their design engineers they needed a screen that looked as much like the iPhone. . . and it had to work like an iPhone as closely as possible for marketing purposes so people would buy their Galaxy model instead of an iPhone!
The Supremes did not disagree those patent do not exist. They just re-wrote the Federal LAW that requires the infringer had to pay their entire profits on the infringing product to the patent holder, saying instead that the profits had to be apportioned according to what portion the design has on the entire device. But on that is a difficult thing to assign when the DESIGN is a lot of what makes the iPhone desirable. 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.
Good grief,indeed.
I was under the impression that an idea is never patentable...
Only the implementaion of the idea