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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.
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.
Yes, a tiny underdog... one of the most cash-rich private entities in the history of the planet... Poor whittle Apple
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Is this a good thing, or a bad thing?
It still seems to be a bad thing, or a less worse thing if you are Samsung.
This is the case where Samsung was found guilty of infringing on Apple's patents for look and feel. In my opinion, some of the rulings went beyond what a reasonable person with basic technology understanding would find infringing. In that sense, it's still a bad thing.
From Samsung's perspective it's a less bad thing. It means that they can argue that they should be paying fractions of what they were ordered to pay in the first place because the full value of the product is not directly tied to what was found to be infringing. There will now be another 2 year battle arguing the exact value that these components adds to the overall product.
FYI: I am not a lawyer. The above are personal opinions.
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."
Yeah, it's pretty clear to anyone watching from the background, that Apple (and other US companies) get preferential treatment from lawmakers and the Justice Department.
US governments treatment of GM vs Toyota, anyone?
Has anyone at GM lost their jobs over kids dying, except that one "engineer" that had to take the fall? Compare to the downright hide-your-kids-eyes treatment of Toyota...
It's also getting rather silly, because the phones involved are no longer for sale, Samsung no longer uses the version of TouchWiz that looks like the iPhone (courtesy of Google and others that have made the Android UI more standardized across Android devices, so working like an iPhone makes things feel odd). I mean, even the phones themselves are probably sitting in drawers and landfills by now (Samsung Galaxy S2, anyone? I think that was the LATEST phone involved).
In the end, it will probably all end up for naught - though there may be regulatory changes for the worst - if a patent lawsuit takes years to resolve, by the time it is resolved, the infringement is no longer valid because the products are long obsolete. This may mean the way around it is to simply a war on attrition - violate the patent now, then just argue and argue until the whole issue is moot.
Heck, I think even the patent behind it has expired by now - (it's a design patent, which only have a short 5 year lifespan).
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'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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.