Samsung Wins At Supreme Court in $400 Million Battle Over Apple iPhone Design

On December 6, 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of Samsung Electronics in Samsung v. Apple, tossing a nearly $400 million Federal Circuit decision which ordered Samsung to pay damages equal to its entire profit from smartphones with design elements that infringed Apple’s iPhone design. The Supreme Court disagreed with the Federal Circuit’s stance on awarding total profit damages for infringing a component of a product [article of manufacture], as a component may be integrated into a larger product. Forbes contacted Finnegan attorney Elizabeth D. Ferrill for her thoughts on the decision.

Ferrill believes that the Supreme Court didn’t provide much guidance on how to determine what a design patent covers or how much it might contribute to damages. She said the decision leaves the Federal Circuit to develop a test for determining what exactly a given patent covers and how to apportion damages for an "article of manufacture". Ferrill said, "Given the paucity of cases in this once-arcane area of patent law, courts have a lot of work ahead of them to define the boundaries of design patents and the damages available when they infringed."