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Supreme Court Rules For Samsung in Smartphone Fight With Apple (reuters.com)
The Supreme Court on Tuesday sided with Samsung in its high-profile patent dispute with Apple over design of the iPhone. The justices said Samsung may not be required to pay all the profits it earned from 11 phone models because the features at issue are only a tiny part of the devices. From a report on Reuters: The justices in their 8-0 ruling sent the case back to the lower court for further proceedings. The decision gives Samsung another chance to try to get back a big chunk of the money it paid Apple in December following a 2012 jury verdict that it infringed Apple's iPhone patents and mimicked its distinctive appearance in making the Galaxy and other competing devices. The court held that a patent violator does not always have to fork over its entire profits from the sales of products using stolen designs, if the designs covered only certain components and not the whole thing.
Take that, hipsters!
suddenoutbreakofcommonsense tag.
Is this a good thing, or a bad thing?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
And they ate the fanbois.
And there was much rejoicing!
from the ./ summary:
The justices in their 8-0 ruling sent the case back to the lower court for further proceedings.
Another way to put that is the Supreme Court unanimously decided that both sides need to keep paying their lawyers.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
This ruling is explosive!
Specifically, up until 1885, the patent act had damages for infringement of a design patent that were "the actual damages sustained". In 1885, there was a design patent infringement case having to do with carpet designs. The lower court said the actual damages were the infringer's profits, in $ per yard of carpet sold. The Supreme Court reversed and said that since bland carpets have some intrinsic value, then the damages should be limited only to what part of the profits that were explicitly due to the design, as opposed to the carpet. I.e. if you can sell this carpet for $5/yard, or you could sell a beige carpet for $3/yard, then the profits due to the design are $2/yard.
Mmmkay, whatever, but that's not what Congress intended. So in 1887, Congress explicitly rewrote the statute to reverse the Supreme Court's ruling, saying that the damages for infringing a design patent were "the total profit made by the manufacture or sale of the article to which the design had been applied." This is how checks and balances work under our Constitution... The Supreme Court can interpret anything that's ambiguous in a statute, as a check on Congress; and Congress can draft statutes that explicitly overturn Court rulings and say "x is the proper interpretation, rather than y". Here, they said it was the total profits for the sale of the article, so that infringing carpet is back to $5/yard.
So that stood for 140 years (including the 1952 Patent Act, where Congress again said that the damages for infringement were the total profit).
But then here, the Court steps in and says "oh, by total profit, it's just the total profit for any component using the design, not the entire article." So, for example, the design on those carpets may only apply to the top fibers and not the mat into which they're woven, so the profits are... well, no one sells just the top fibers, so no one knows. And the justification for this is based on the fact that you can get a utility patent that covers a component. But that's not really a good justification to overturn 140 years of precedent and completely disregard what Congress has said, twice.
And then if that weren't bad enough, the decision ends with "so how do we determine whether the 'article' for purposes of infringement is the entire device or just a component? That would require us to set out a test for identifying the relevant article... But that's hard, so we're not going to do it."
It's as bad as the Alice Corp. decision with Justice Thomas saying, "abstract ideas are unpatentable. What's an abstract idea? Eh, we don't need to define that." Both pro-patent and anti-patent ridiculed him for that, rightly. This decision is at least as bad, with it's "we need a test to identify the relevant article, but we're going to punt on that question and hope that someone else answers it."
Apple owns (or tried to own) a patent on rounded corners. Case closed. They have enough in the bank that they don't need to resort to patent trolling.
besides, David Akuda (Acuda?) should have sued apple for infringing on his PADD design for Star Trek TNG. The similarities are striking.
It's a computer. With a screen. And you can touch it.
PATENT
Because Apple phones don't burn your house down.
The court actually said something to the effect of "289 doesn't require all the profits to be eligible for judgement, so go redetermine what's eligible for judgement."
It's not really a victory.
If the cases were so cut-and-dried, why was the decision 8-0? Usually, if there is such an obvious conflict with the law, at least ONE justice will dissent. But zero?
I don't give a shit what congress said 100+ years ago. Rationalizing that rounded corners is worth the entire profits of a phone is intuitively wrong.
love is just extroverted narcissism
I think you're missing the point. The actual damages would be people who bought the phone for those specific design features and without them would have bought an iphone. This is ultimately an unknowable thing in an absolute sense, but one can estimate the impact of design features on purchasing decision. This is the actual damages. This is remanded back to the lower court to take this in to account when considering actual damages.
Apple would suffer no actual damages from me as purchaser of the Samsung phone because I would never by and iPhone even if it was the only mobile phone.
That just shows what we all know: Samsung's phones are on fire, Apple's, not so much.
So you're saying that if Samsung marketed their phone as "a case containing phone hardware and software" and itemized it, then the damages could be based off of a $0.50 case. But since they sold it as a combined product, they are liable for the full ~$400 phone. And you don't think this absurd?
Slashdot loves car example - let's think of GM or Ford. They sell a $40,000 car, and because there is some submarine patent on a copper relay somewhere deep inside the sat nav system, Gm or Ford is expected to turn over all their profits to the patent troll? You seriously don't see how this could be abused the hell out of?
The legal system should be about codifying justice. So fine - you steal someone's 50 cent phone cover design, pay damages on the 50 cent cover design - not everything Samsung phone it's part of, every Samsung robot that made it, and every Samsung TV or whatever else the phone may interface with. Justice is not served by legalizing mooching off of successful businesses.
It's not the Supreme Court's job to replace it. That's the Congress' role.
I'm finding it somewhat improbable that an 8-0 decision would be made on a deeply divided Supreme Court with justices having dramatically different views of the constitution if there's such a compelling case in opposition to the decision they made. Can you put forward a theory that explains why all eight justices rejected this argument?
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
If the cases were so cut-and-dried, why was the decision 8-0? Usually, if there is such an obvious conflict with the law, at least ONE justice will dissent. But zero?
The justices know as much about patents and technology - and are interested in knowing about patents and technology - exactly as much as you'd expect for a bunch of people in their 70s. This decision barely hit 9 pages, and half of that was on the procedural history of the trial and appeal. They had some clerk rush this off, and they don't really care - hence why they acknowledge there needs to be test, but simply remand to the Federal Circuit to come up with the test.
So why 8-0? Because 7 of them probably didn't bother to read the opinion.
I don't give a shit what congress said 100+ years ago. Rationalizing that rounded corners is worth the entire profits of a phone is intuitively wrong.
And if so, Congress should change the law. The Supreme Court doesn't just get to rewrite things on their own for funsies. If it's not unconstitutional - and there's absolutely nothing about this that's unconstitutional, nor does the Court ever suggest there is - then they can't simply strike down a law because they dislike the outcome.
So that stood for 140 years (including the 1952 Patent Act, where Congress again said that the damages for infringement were the total profit).
You're totally right, of course.
Samsung should give all of its smartphone profits to Apple since it infringed on some of Apple's patents.
And conversely, Apple should give all of its iPhone profits to Samsung, since the court had also found that the iPhone had infringed on some of Samsung's patents.
The issue with your analogy with the carpet example, is that the driving value and preference shown for the carpet is the design itself. Without the pattern of which the infringement occurs the carpet would not have been purchased, and it does directly drive customers away from the competitor who owns said patent.
In the case of Samsung vs Apple, the infringing design/features present only a portion of the preference shown to the product, not the whole. Your over simplification by way of example is the short fall. If instead we said someone had a patent on a type of door design, and was in direct competition with a housing builder. Then they noticed that they adopted some similar designs for the doors, decided that they could go after said house builder for the profits of the entire house. Ignoring any additional features, and reasons one might buy between the two competing builders.
The door patent doesn't effect the plumbing, layout, windows, construction quality, the size of the house, or appliances inside it. The door doesn't make the house, but you can't sell one without it.
To me, the case of the prior specification by congress was set to protect innovation by small businesses, not something they really are all about anymore. The intent would seem to be to prevent someone from patenting and releasing a product, and a larger company blatantly infringing on that patent. The larger company, which is already established could leverage their existing processes, and distribution to squeeze out the competitor, and even with a settlement from the infringement, the patent holder would have no hope of capturing any attention in the market place.
More likely 8-0 because the decision of the lower court is absurd.
I'm finding it somewhat improbable that an 8-0 decision would be made on a deeply divided Supreme Court with justices having dramatically different views of the constitution if there's such a compelling case in opposition to the decision they made. Can you put forward a theory that explains why all eight justices rejected this argument?
This case doesn't involve constitutionality at all, so their deeply divided views there don't matter. Most patent decisions are unanimous or nearly unanimous. Generally, because they care about patents and technology exactly as much as you'd expect from a bunch of 70 year olds that don't even use email.
Why did they reject the argument? Because they didn't like the outcome.
What's the legal reasoning that supports that? There really isn't any. If there's no constitutional argument to be made, they don't get to rewrite a statute just because they dislike the outcome. Instead, they try to shoehorn in a statutory interpretation argument that doesn't really apply, considering that Congress explicitly told them how to interpret the statute the last time this happened.
There is no rule of law in this country any more... if we are going to ignore the law at least let it be the dumb ones.
love is just extroverted narcissism
So that stood for 140 years (including the 1952 Patent Act, where Congress again said that the damages for infringement were the total profit).
You're totally right, of course.
Samsung should give all of its smartphone profits to Apple since it infringed on some of Apple's patents.
And conversely, Apple should give all of its iPhone profits to Samsung, since the court had also found that the iPhone had infringed on some of Samsung's patents.
Not quite - the "total profit" part in the statute only applies to design patents. And Samsung never accused Apple of infringing any design patents, and Apple was never found to have done so. So, no, the damages wouldn't offset that way.
The better question is "why are design patents treated differently?"
From the intro: The court held that a patent violator does not always have to fork over its entire profits from the sales of products using STOLEN designs"
Patent law is NOT property law. Copyright violation is NOT theft. The designs were NOT stolen. Patent holders like to imply that there is a moral failing or ungodly evil committed when a patent is violated. The music industry told kids who downloaded songs from Napster that their actions were immoral. But ideas can't be owned. Music (as differentiated from the physical distribution medium) is not property. There is no such thing as Intellectual Property..
Article 1 Section 8 of the Constitution defines the extent and limits of patents, copyrights, and trademarks. If those things were property there would be no need for separate law regarding them. If they were property, then taking them would be prosecuted under common theft and larceny statutes. We attach a moral value to theft. The 10 Commandments inveigh against stealing. So patent holders like to use the immorality angle to help enforce their claims. But it's just a matter of money. And the end purpose of that money is (according to the Constitution) to further the development of the arts and sciences. So quit talking about stolen designs. The Supreme Court did not use that language. So why are you?
You're misrepresenting the opinion. The opinion is not "Oh, let's go back to the incremental value added by the patented technology as the yardstick for profitability", it's "Let's recognize that this device is made up of separate parts ("articles of manufacture"), and only one part violates the patent. The profits that need to be turned over to Apple are those applying to that component."
What's the difference?
In the carpet's case, 100% of the carpet violates the patent, regardless of whether you compare it to a beige carpet or not. In the phone's case, the phone has a case, a screen, electronics, and so on. Only the case, for example, violates the rounded corners patent.
Reading the opinion, they're not just making up that criterion. The "article of manufacture" concept is long standing in the patent world, and it would certainly mean a complete shake up of patents if patents ceased to apply to components, and only to the whole of a completed product. (Whether that's a good or bad thing I'll leave to the lawyers.)
This hopefully explains why 8 justices who rarely agree on anything outside of which branch of Applebees to have lunch at all agreed with one another this time.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
It's not the Supreme Court's job to replace it. That's the Congress' role.
The OP's whole point was that it's no one's job to replace it, because it's a job that shouldn't exist in the first place. Effectively, the OP is asserting that the Supreme Court acted contrary to the law in their ruling. Unless they're declaring a law unconstitutional (which they didn't), they have no right to do so, which means that the need for a replacement is entirely invalid.
I don't know if the OP is making all of this up or not (nor do I care enough to investigate, if I'm being honest), but it's certainly an interesting twist if it's true, and it's something that everyone on all sides should be able to agree is not good for case law in the country.
Nope, you're just wrong about what they did. I explained here, but to summarize:
Your claim: they went back to 1885 and changed the profitability criteria to "incremental value added by patent."
What they actually did: they said that the profits due to the infringed upon party need to be those applying to the component that was sold, rather than the whole of the smartphone.
To put it another way: If Samsung makes $200 on profits per a $1000 phone, and would have made $199 in profits if it didn't have rounded corners, and case makes up 5% of the total cost of the phone, then:
In 1885 (we agree): Samsung would pay $1 per phone to Apple.
In your interpretation of the law: Samsung should pay $200 per phone to Apple.
Eight supreme court justices: Samsung should pay something similar to 5% of $200, eg $10 per phone (or a similar formula.)
Your insults to the Supreme Court Justices are noted and hardly do your case credit: they may not know much about technology, but this case wasn't about technologies, it was about the criteria needed to measure compensation. You bet Scalia's fat dead ass they all know the law on that better than anyone else.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
You're misrepresenting the opinion. The opinion is not "Oh, let's go back to the incremental value added by the patented technology as the yardstick for profitability"
I never said it was. I said they're disregarding the explicit language of a long-standing statute and previous Congress-slap of the court, and replacing it with "you want a test? Go make one up." And sadly that's not a misrepresentation. It's barely even a paraphrase.
In the carpet's case, 100% of the carpet violates the patent, regardless of whether you compare it to a beige carpet or not.
Flip over a carpet sometime. You'll see a standard mat that the fibers are woven into that is the same, regardless of design. That mat is a substantial part of the carpet, literally holding it together.
Reading the opinion, they're not just making up that criterion. The "article of manufacture" concept is long standing in the patent world, and it would certainly mean a complete shake up of patents if patents ceased to apply to components, and only to the whole of a completed product. (Whether that's a good or bad thing I'll leave to the lawyers.)
Yes, but it's not necessary to redefine article of manufacture. Going back to the 1887 statute, the phrase was "the total profit made by him from the manufacture or sale. . . of the article or articles to which the design, or colorable imitation thereof, has been applied.” And this was preserved in the 1952 Act, saying:
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...
So the question is not "what's an article of manufacture, is it just a component", but "to what has the design been applied". And there, it seems that you can either say, "it's applied to the product", or you can go to ever narrower levels of "it's applied to a case... well, part of the case... well, really just the surface of part of the case... well, just the paint on the surface of part of the case... but not the primer either..."
Absolutely untrue, and after you made a big song and dance about how they're somehow reversing Congress's wishes, it's hard for me to take seriously the notion you were never arguing that.
Nobody's arguing any different. If there's a practical way to separate the components of a carpet into articles of manufacture (and they must be items you'd make separately) in such a way that only one part violates the patent, then only that one part violates the patent, and the damages can be assessed. That's entirely within the keeping of the 1952 act, which explicitly codifies the "Article of manufacture" language.
Sotomayor isn't redefining anything. The term has always had a meaning. Congress's intent is preserved by this ruling. The reason all eight justices agreed that this was the original intent, and original meaning of the term, is because legally it is.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Nope, you're just wrong about what they did. I explained here, but to summarize:
Your claim: they went back to 1885 and changed the profitability criteria to "incremental value added by patent."
I never said that, and responded to your other post explaining that I never said that. If you want to insist I did say it, please copy-paste from my post.
What they actually did: they said that the profits due to the infringed upon party need to be those applying to the component that was sold, rather than the whole of the smartphone.
What I said in my original post: "the Court steps in and says "oh, by total profit, it's just the total profit for any component using the design, not the entire article."
I think you've misread what I was saying. Your attempt to correct me by saying the same thing I did is misguided, but I nonetheless appreciate the indirect confirmation of my analysis.
Your insults to the Supreme Court Justices are noted and hardly do your case credit: they may not know much about technology, but this case wasn't about technologies, it was about the criteria needed to measure compensation. You bet Scalia's fat dead ass they all know the law on that better than anyone else.
My insults to them were an explanation of why they voted 8-0 and issued an opinion that only had 5 substantive pages and punted the creation of any test to the Federal Circuit: they really don't care much about patent law. This was to address your contention that, because they're "deeply divided" on Constitutional issues around, say, privacy or the federal-state divide, it's highly unusual for them ever to agree on something (that happens to entirely unrelated to those issues).
So that stood for 140 years (including the 1952 Patent Act, where Congress again said that the damages for infringement were the total profit).
But then here, the Court steps in and says "oh, by total profit, it's just the total profit for any component using the design, not the entire article." So, for example, the design on those carpets may only apply to the top fibers and not the mat into which they're woven, so the profits are... well, no one sells just the top fibers, so no one knows. And the justification for this is based on the fact that you can get a utility patent that covers a component. But that's not really a good justification to overturn 140 years of precedent and completely disregard what Congress has said, twice.
And then if that weren't bad enough, the decision ends with "so how do we determine whether the 'article' for purposes of infringement is the entire device or just a component?
FTA:
The legal dispute centered on whether the term "article of manufacture," on which design patent damages are calculated in U.S. patent law, should be interpreted as a finished product in its entirety, or merely a component in a complex product.
In court papers, Samsung, Apple and the U.S. government all agreed that the term could mean a component.
So even Apple disagrees with you, it should only be the profits of the component.
And courts aren't computers who will happily execute buggy code. If a law leads to an extreme enough outcome (like turning over hundreds of millions of profits over an ambiguous patent infringement that was responsible for only a tiny portion of that profit) they will find a basis to correct the bug.
That would require us to set out a test for identifying the relevant article... But that's hard, so we're not going to do it."
Which is why they're throwing the decision back to lower courts, who will start proposing specific tests in different rulings and cases. Those cases will be appealed, different districts will develop different standards and those will need be be reconciled, and eventually over many different cases a robust test will emerge.
Asking the SCOTUS to develop a test right off the bat is a recipe for a bad precedent.
I stole this Sig
Where the Supreme Court differs from you is that it sees a phone as being more than just a single patented object. Here's the law itself:
"That hereafter, during the term of letters-patent for a design, it shall be unlawful for any person other than the owner of said letters-patent without the license of such owner, to apply the design secured by such letters-patent, or any colorable imitation thereof, to any article of manufacture for the purpose of sale, or to sell or expose for sale any article of manufacture to which such design or colorable imitation shall, without the license of the owner, have been applied, knowing that the same has been so applied. Any person violating the provisions, or either of them, of this section, shall be liable in the amount of two hundred and fifty dollars; and in case the total profit made by him from the manufacture or sale, as aforesaid, of the article or articles to which the design, or colorable imitation thereof, has been applied, exceeds the sum of two hundred and fifty dollars he shall be further liable for the excess of such profit over and above the sum of two hundred and fifty dollars; and the full amount of such liability may be recovered by the owner of the letters-patent to his own use, in any circuit court of the United States having jurisdiction of the parties, either by an action at law or upon a bill in equity for an injunction to restrain such infringement
I think we can both agree that if Samsung had sold a phone chassis that copied Apple's design then all profits for said chassis would go to Apple. However, this is only a component of another product -- their phone. If a car company copies some other companies' bumper design, and then uses these bumpers on their next line of cars, why would the profits for the entire car be forfeited? Only in the case where it can be proved that sale of these new cars hinged specifically and only on the use of these bumpers would all profits be forfeit. For me, the key line is:
profit made by him from the manufacture or sale, as aforesaid, of the article or articles to which the design, or colorable imitation thereof, has been applied
As for precedence, see Haydenfeldt v. Daney Co., 93 U. S. 629. Another good read is Some Questions under the Design Patent Act of 1887 by Frederic H. Betts (The Yale Law Journal, Vol. 1, No. 5 (May, 1892), pp. 181-192)
The Legislature may write laws, but the Courts will still interpret them.
Exactly! How the hell do you tease out what part of the profit was derived from the shape of the phone case and the arrangement of icons?!? Especially since the phone may not have sold, or sold as well, without those properties? Samsung's analogy about an 18-wheeler with an infringing cupholder is just absurd -- without A/B testing, there's no way to know whether buyers chose the 18-wheeler based on the cupholder or some other factor. But if the cupholder was the deciding factor (as, in actuality, it often is), then *all* of the profits were derived from that infringement.
Now I think design patents are problematic, especially when things are merely similar rather than indistinguishable, but I agree that this verdict was the worst possible outcome.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Absolutely untrue
Then please quote from the opinion where the test is laid out. I'll wait.
Nobody's arguing any different. If there's a practical way to separate the components of a carpet into articles of manufacture (and they must be items you'd make separately) in such a way that only one part violates the patent, then only that one part violates the patent, and the damages can be assessed. That's entirely within the keeping of the 1952 act, which explicitly codifies the "Article of manufacture" language.
Mats are made in advance of weaving the carpet fibers. Only the carpet fibers infringe the patent, not the mat. This new analysis that the damages would not be measured by the total profits per yard of carpet, however, is directly at odds with Congress' explicit 1887 refutation of that earlier case.
Sotomayor isn't redefining anything.
Yes, I know that. You were the one who said that "it would certainly mean a complete shake up of patents if patents ceased to apply to components", and I said that it wasn't necessary to redefine the term. It's a bit odd that you're now explaining to me that no one's redefining the term, considering that's what I just said. Makes me wonder if you're actually reading my entire post, or just angrily pounding out a response based on the first couple words in each sentence.
I don't think that you read the article. So, some quotes from the article that you might find helpful:
With all parties agreeing that the law could refer to a component, the court is unlikely to decide otherwise.
In other words, the appeal was on whether Samsung was required to present evidence that the disputed technology was a component or the whole thing.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
OK, if you say so. That makes about 90% of your original post completely irrelevant to any point you were trying to make. You could have just said "Congress passed the latest law that applied to this in 1952, and this appears to be at odds with how I interpret it", but instead you wrote some enormous history of how SCOTUS totally misunderstood Congress's intent in 1885 and Congress stepped in and rewrote the law, even though that has nothing whatsoever to do with the case in hand.
You're implying that this isn't normal. SCOTUS doesn't usually write long essays on all the possible things it wants to overturn, and nearly never prescribes how a lower court should resolve them. This is a fairly standard case of a trial participant appealing a ruling over a technical error, and SCOTUS agreeing with them, explaining why, and telling the lower court to rethink.
And it doesn't take more than five pages to explain "You're doing it wrong, you should be basing profits on the articles of manufacture, like the law says you should, rather than the entire finished product."
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
You are absolutely correct, the individual components must be taken into account. The simple test is if Samsung infringed on patents from two companies both would be able to claim all the profits. The profits must be split between companies which is no different from Samsung replacing the other company. To take it to the extreme I could build an aircraft carrier and if one light on the carrier was infringing on a patent the light company would have a claim to all the profits.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
The illuminati had him killed
It is true that there are words of present grant in this law; but, in construing it, we are not to look at any single phrase in it, but to its whole scope, in order to arrive at the intention of the makers of it. "It is better always," says Judge Sharswood, "to adhere to a plain common-sense interpretation of the words of a statute, than to apply to them refined and technical rules of grammatical construction. Gyger's Estate, 65 Penn. St. 312.
and
This interpretation, although seemingly contrary to the letter of the statute, is really within its reason and spirit.
So you are asserting that the 8 most powerful judges of the country; the same people who know that their judgments affect everybody and the course of history for years to come; that their judgments will be picked over and studied by lower courts, lawyers, and law students, not to mention journalists, philosophers and sociologists; that this is literally their only job... you assert that 7 (or indeed any more than 1-2) of them are all just phoning it in?
That could be true... or it could be that a random person on the internet has a mistaken understanding of the law. Can you name any other "bad law" cases which passed unanimously in US history? All the other ones which I can think of as being potentially "bad law" (e.g. Roe v. Wade, Citizens United, Plessy v. Ferguson, Bush v. Gore, Jacobellis v. Ohio, etc) had at least one dissent.
Which is why they're throwing the decision back to lower courts, who will start proposing specific tests in different rulings and cases. Those cases will be appealed, different districts will develop different standards and those will need be be reconciled, and eventually over many different cases a robust test will emerge.
Asking the SCOTUS to develop a test right off the bat is a recipe for a bad precedent.
Although generally true, patent appeals all go to the federal circuit, not the other circuits, so it's not like SCOTUS will get a split to reconcile. As with the Bilski and Akami decisions, the Fed Circ. will propose a test; SCOTUS will say "eh, not that one"; the Fed will propose another; and rinse, and repeat.
It does involve constitutionality. The constitutionality of any law passed by Congress must be be weighed by the possibilities of that law. (McCollough vs Maryland and Brown v Maryland). If the monetary award is a penalty against Samsung, it can be argued as excessive in the light of only a component of their phone was infringing (and both parties agreed that the infringing design could be be considered a component). Article 8 of the Constitution prohibits excessive fines.
Regardless of whether you're pro-patent or anti-patent, pro-Apple or anti-Apple, pro-Samsung or anti-Samsung, this was a terrible decision.
I'm pretty sure that the anti-patent, anti-Apple, pro-Samsung people are going to vigorously disagree with you.
And it was not about "rounded corners", it was significantly more complex than that. Go read the transcripts and learn what it was actually about. Bottom line is, they STILL said Samsung were thieves , they are mearly arguing over the level of the penalties.
It does involve constitutionality. The constitutionality of any law passed by Congress must be be weighed by the possibilities of that law. (McCollough vs Maryland and Brown v Maryland). If the monetary award is a penalty against Samsung, it can be argued as excessive in the light of only a component of their phone was infringing (and both parties agreed that the infringing design could be be considered a component). Article 8 of the Constitution prohibits excessive fines.
The monetary award is not a penalty, but compensatory damages, which are not fines. That's been ruled on repeatedly. And no part of this decision involved the 8th Amendment. Congress also has almost limitless rulemaking authority for patents and copyrights under Article I, Section 8, Clause 8, primarily subject only to the first amendment (where most conflicts would arise).
Not quite - the "total profit" part in the statute only applies to design patents.
And yet, just like the camera and folder organization patent and the cell phone video conferencing patent from Samsung, all the patents in question from Apple in this last particular case brought up by the Supreme Court were ALL utility patents, NOT design patents.
The '647 patent covers "quick links," which do things like automatically detect data in messages that can be clicked. The '959 patent covers universal search, such as what Apple uses in Siri. Patent No. '414 involves background syncing, such as syncing calendars, email, and contacts. The '721 patent covers slide-to-unlock, the motion used to unlock the home screen. And '172 covers predictive text.
Apple is a patent trolling company
Not quite - the "total profit" part in the statute only applies to design patents.
And yet, just like the camera and folder organization patent and the cell phone video conferencing patent from Samsung, all the patents in question from Apple in this last particular case brought up by the Supreme Court were ALL utility patents, NOT design patents.
The '647 patent covers "quick links," which do things like automatically detect data in messages that can be clicked. The '959 patent covers universal search, such as what Apple uses in Siri. Patent No. '414 involves background syncing, such as syncing calendars, email, and contacts. The '721 patent covers slide-to-unlock, the motion used to unlock the home screen. And '172 covers predictive text.
Nope, you're wrong. From the opinion:
Apple secured many design patents in connection with the release. Among those patents were the D618,677 patent, covering a black rectangular front face with rounded corners, the D593,087 patent, covering a rectangular front face with rounded corners and a raised rim,and the D604,305 patent, covering a grid of 16 colorful icons on a black screen.
And, from the Wiki:
In two separate lawsuits,[48][49] Apple accused Samsung of infringing on three utility patents (United States Patent Nos. 7,469,381, 7,844,915, and 7,864,163) and four design patents (United States Patent Nos. D504,889, D593,087, D618,677, and D604,305). Samsung accused Apple of infringing on United States Patent Nos. 7,675,941, 7,447,516, 7,698,711, 7,577,460, and 7,456,893.
The problem here is actually with the design patents and with how they are being used in this case. For things to work this way the product should only be allowed to be covered by one design patent, that details the design of the actual product. Then you can go after true knock-offs. But over those 140 years design patents have been allowed to cover minute details of the design (like the rounded corners), so that an entire family of products is covered by some "design aesthetic". Here Samsung is accused/guilty of copying only parts of the aesthetic, so that if you squint a little and tilt the product at just the right angle you might get confused that this was actually an iPhone. In reality no one who bought a Samsung phone was confused and thought they were buying an iPhone. Maybe a few people bought one because it was cheap but if their friends looked at it quickly then maybe they would think they had sprung for an expensive iPhone... Should Samsung be forced to pay all their profits? Maybe. But it is not an easy decision.
Unfortunately the real problems with this trial, that the jury foreman used outside evidence (his own experience with patents) to convince the jury that their role was not to determine the validity of the patents, when it explicitly was, has been ignored by the courts. In addition, the jury was clearly fairly confused, awarding damages for the wrong things...
1) (3 marks) If the infringement payments were counted as profits would the money keep shuffling back and forth indefinitely?
20 (5 marks) Prove that where the diameter of the hole is negligible relative to the diameter of a planet of uniform density that the resultant motion is simple harmonic motion.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Or you could say that the supreme court has twice told congress that this patent mechanism congress has tried to craft is of dubious legality or unconstitutional.
Legislative bodies can craft laws all day long but it's the job of the courts to get rid of the bad ones.
My common sense take on this. The original verdict was that they could collect the entire profit on a car because the steering wheel copied a patented shape. (I know there were other patents involved) The Supreme Court ruled nope, just for the steering wheel.
So your saying that the designs in quite a few old sci-fi movies have no value, how about the phone icons that have been on phone booths for many years. Practically nothing apple 'inovated' is by any definition innovation, and none of it is non-obvious. How about I go draft up a patent for creating carbon-dioxide using organic proceses and charge you for breathing, even if it is only a part. Because this is basically what apple has been doing.
Patents have always been a drain on society. Seriously, they have done nothing but hurt us the consumer since their inception. They are also a way for large businesses to utterly destroy smaller businesses, even if the patent lawsuits are invalid. Thus destroying choice for us the consumer. The only industry that even has something close to an argument in favor of patents is pharmaceutical. And look at how they operate. Their price gouging is almost legendary, even on items where the patent has expired. So I'm not sure if it is even needed there.
They are remanding it back to federal appellate court. They probably went 8-0 on that bit, agreeing that the lower court needs another at-bat.
Having actually read the ruling, the answer is that it didn't change any precedent, and they actually ruled that the Federal Circuit had avoided existing precedent, and that their interpretation also conflicted directly with the statute.
The really funny part is that 50 years ago Congress rewrote the law to say exactly what the Court said today, which was already the precedent under the old law. So 100+ years ago Congress wrote the law in an unclear way, the Court clarified, and then 50 years ago Congress fixed the law to say the same thing as the precedent. Then a couple years ago, the appeals court made up some nonsense that was exactly the same as what the Court had thrown out 100 years ago. Most slashdot readers are on one side or the other of this issue, and either way, they don't/won't/can't comprehend the basic facts in dispute.
The whole thing is only a few pages, and it was written by Sotomayor so it is easy to read. They upheld the exact wording of the statute here, which is in agreement with precedent. The only thing thrown out was the awful ruling.
The Federal Circuit would have us believe that the word "article" in "article of manufacture" means only things available for sale by themselves. As Justice Sotomayor explains, article actually means any item, it is a very broad word. So an "article of manufacture" is a thing you make; the definition has nothing to do with if it is sold to the end consumer in a single box or not. According to Apple and the Federal Circuit, even the toys in a Happy Meal wouldn't be articles of manufacture, since they're not sold by themselves! A toy in a crackerjack box? Not an article of manufacture. A car stereo? Oh, only if it is a brand available in the store. A brand only sold as an OEM unit would not be an article of manufacture! Complete absurdity.
Also clear in the ruling is that if Samsung had had better SCOTUS lawyers, they could have got more of the issues decided; there were issues briefed by the government that would likely have gone Samsung's way, that are instead being sent back down to the Federal Circuit. But the Court did make clear that they're ready to do more work on this case when it comes back, and it likely will because Apple can't resist asking for the moon, and the Federal Circuit can't resist giving Apple whatever they ask for.
You're close, but it isn't the incremental profits as it is with other types of IP; here it is 100% of the profit directly attributable to the component. So it doesn't matter how much profit they made, or how much less they would have made had they not infringed.
What matters is the profit that they made from the physical component that infringed. It doesn't matter what the differential would be if they used something else. Unfortunately for Apple, the design patent covers primarily the plastic bezel, for which Samsung probably doesn't even have any profits, and the software screen layout, which is software, and likely don't have any profits from the software either.
The reality is that design patents aren't as useful as Apple claimed; on a decorative item, which is what they're intended for, they offer a lot of protection because the design actually is the value; a decorative plate is the typical example. Complex items that are mostly functional aren't well protected by design patents, because most of the device is functional and by definition isn't covered, and you're not going to get paid for the functional components just because the case copied your case. If a regular functional-but-ugly smarthphone cost $5, and the one with the fancy design code $500, as is the case with decorative plates, then it would make sense to protect it that way.
... instead you wrote some enormous history of how SCOTUS totally misunderstood Congress's intent in 1885 and Congress stepped in and rewrote the law, even though that has nothing whatsoever to do with the case in hand.
If you read the ruling, it actually does matter, in that the Court looked at it and it made their decision easy here. Reading the ruling is really easy, it is only a few pages of plain English. What Congress did when they re-wrote the law was to make the law consistent with what was already the precedent, that's what the fanbois are getting a bit confused about. Sometimes, the Court smacks down a law, and Congress rewrites it trying to get their way. That is what some smucks would have you believe here. But if you read the ruling it explains it very clearly; that isn't what happened here. Here Congress just fixed the law to say the same thing as what the Court had interpreted the old law as meaning.
And it doesn't take more than five pages to explain "You're doing it wrong...
Granted, it is 9 pages. But these "pages" are a single narrow column of text with large print. A more typical business format would only reach 3 pages. And most of it is spent explaining the dispute; the part explaining the ruling and its reasoning is only three pages, starting with:
followed by a detailed explanation. That Congress didn't even try to change the precedent when they last visited the law makes it clear to the Court what their intent was.
Samsung's lawyers hit the nail on the head in their argument before the Supreme Court. Allowing the lower court rulings to stand would award the owner of a cup holder patent the entire profit from the sale of an 18-wheeler big rig truck just because it used the infringing cup holder design.
I can see an argument for awarding slightly more of the profit than is attributable to the single component (having the infringing feature allowed you to make sales which you wouldn't have made). But awarding all the profit is insane. If that's the standard you're going to use, then Apple should just hand over all their profit from their iPhones 1 through 4 to Samsung, because they infringed one of Samsung's FRAND patents. Apple escaped punishment for that only because Obama used executive privilege to nullify that ITC decision.
Actually they can. That is the power of checks and balances. Congress writes the laws, The President signs and enforces the laws, and the Court determines whether the laws are valid. You are claiming better knowledge of how things work than all 8 Justices. It was a Unanimous decision by a very divided Court. Guess who we are going to trust, some random internet poster, or the SCOTUS ruling in unison.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
Let's say that Samsung sold the phones bundled with a multi-year wireless service contract worth a few thousand dollars each. Would you calculate damages based their full profit from the bundles? Seems a bit silly, no?
If the cases were so cut-and-dried, why was the decision 8-0? Usually, if there is such an obvious conflict with the law, at least ONE justice will dissent. But zero?
Wrong. Unanimous decisions are meaningless in many situations involving the US court system - it's pure propaganda to claim otherwise.
Much of US law violates the right to ethical practice of law - and nobody gets selected for high judicial office if they're willing to rock the boat on legal ethics issues. The US political system is massively corrupt at the upper levels - and none of those people want judges that are going to make problems for them. Even if they were so inclined, associations of lawyers make large campaign contributions, which have the effect of preventing reform of the legal system.
The Anti-Federalists foresaw this - it's why they were opposed to a strong federal government. The Bill of Rights was supposed to prevent this form of corruption, but since the Supreme Court frequently ignores it's obligations under the Bill of Rights, it hasn't worked.
It's not within the legal authority of any entity of government to take away rights "retained by" (9th Amendment) or "reserved to" (10th Amendment) the people - by definition and as a matter of ethical practice of law - but many such rights are routinely (and illegally) ignored by the federal court system.
This is not a new situation - slavery and Jim Crow were both violations of fundamental rights - but those historical examples are exceptional in that the problems were actually corrected. Not so with the problems in patent, in copyright, in trademark, in contract law, in property law, and so on, and so forth.
The rest of the world makes fun of the US legal system - but it's not really a funny matter for those of us who have to live with it. In the increasingly global economy, that's no longer just the folks living in the USA.
An ethical Supreme Court would have recognized that there are serious legal ethics problems with the current patent system, and done something about that. Unfortunately, they didn't do their jobs - again, as usual. Oaths to uphold the Bill of Rights are only as good as the men and women who make them - and these folks have demonstrated they just don't care.
Since so much that happens in US law violates fundamental rights, the US government is in the process of losing it's perceived legitimacy - it has already lost that legitimacy in the eyes of many - and who knows where that will end up.