Feds Ask Supreme Court To Void Apple's $400 Million Award From Samsung (siliconbeat.com)

An anonymous reader quotes the San Jose Mercury News technology blog: "The $400 million awarded to Apple in a patent-infringement case against Samsung is a moving target... On Friday, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a "friend of the court" brief to the Supreme Court, asking justices to void the $400 million award and send the case back to a lower court to determine if a new trial is needed... Samsung has argued that it should be liable only for profits attributable to a specific design that violated a patent, not an entire phone, and that the law should be interpreted to impose liability related to "components of the phones, rather than the phones themselves, according to the brief. The department came down on Samsung's side on the component argument, and blasted a federal circuit court ruling that had upheld the jury award.
Ironically, earlier this week Steve Wozniak was praising Samsung for its innovation, both in virtual reality headsets and with a Samsung camera that takes a picture whenever you say "smile".

Comments

Ironically...

[Anonymous Coward]

This has NOTHING to do with Apple denying the Obama Administration's demand to add backdoors to their operating system.

Re:I'm glad the Feds feel that way

[WheezyJoe]

Apples and Oranges, my friend. MPAA/RIAA is copyright (and some trademark). This Fed thing is Patent, and the purpose for the award is, based on the jury's decision on the evidence, to get justice for Samsung making (huge) profits off stolen idea(s). Apple being a big company, the issue may get a little fuzzy. So, imagine if Apple were a tiny company of a few guys in a garage, making a few phones with their parents' money, and a year later Samsung is making billions of them that look and act just like them. The Patent system exists to give the garage guys a chance at some justice, so they and every other inventor don't just say fuck-it and hit the pipe.

If the jury finds that Samsung did steal, then the penalty is supposed to be severe, and the damages are hooked to the profits made off the theft. The theft concerned technologies associated with a mobile phone, and went into building and marketing a phone. So, the jury based their award based on profits made off Samsung's phones.

The Justice Department, for some reason, now wants the jury to split hairs and somehow figure out how much more Samsung's profits would be equipped with Apple's inventions vs. what Samsung would have earned if they had just done without. Given that juries in patent cases are typically in way over their heads in the first place... good luck with that!!!

Samsung's business practice has often been to unapologetically copy stuff and use their deep, deep pockets to out litigate patent holders, at least until they attain dominant market share, and then, mission accomplished, maybe settle. Apple's one of the few players big enough to fight back. I think the jury did the right thing, and $400 mil might be enough of a bite to deter Samsung from keeping it up. What the Justice Department hopes to accomplish here completely escapes me, except it will make it even harder for honest patent holders to ever see a dime out of well-financed thieves.

Admittedly, trolls might benefit, too, if they hold a patent that actually sticks. Most of them don't, and defendants like Newegg who don't fall for that shit have been shutting them down way before there's a question of damages. So, this is not about trolls. This is about a mega-rich vertically-integrated conglomerate stealing other people's R&D to become the dominant player in a market, and using every legal trick money can buy to weasel their way out of being held accountable.