Apple and Samsung have been locked in a legal battle over various design patents related to the iPhone since 2011. After nearly six years and a trip all the way to the Supreme Court and back, in May of this year the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California may finally decide how much Samsung owes to Apple for infringing Apple’s design patents. The issue to be settled is how much is owed for design patent infringement; the entire profit from the product incorporating a component infringing the design, or the just the profit attributed to the infringing component?
Apple had previously been awarded $399 million in damages for Samsung’s design patent infringement, but that calculation was based on the profits made from the sales of whole Samsung infringing smartphones as single end products. The Supreme Court overturned the damages award because it felt it was possible that the design elements covered by Apple’s design patents, graphical user interface elements and housing configurations, were not directed to an entire phone. The Supreme Court remanded the case for consideration as to whether Apple’s design patents were to a component of a phone, and if so, whether Samsung was then only liable for a portion of the profit on an entire infringing Samsung phone sale. If the designs are held to be to components, Samsung could owe Apple far less than the original $399 million in damages. The trial on damages is currently set to start May 14, 2018, and the outcome is one to watch.
Read the full opinion of the Supreme Court here, Samsung Electronics Co., LTD. v. Apple Inc.
See the design patents at issue: D604,305, D618,677, D593,087