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Samsung Must Pay Apple $539 Million For Infringing iPhone Design Patents, Jury Finds (cnet.com)
Samsung must pay Apple $539 million for infringing five patents with Android phones it sold in 2010 and 2011, a jury has found in a legal fight that dates back seven years. "The unanimous decision, in the U.S. District Court in San Jose in the heart of Silicon Valley, is just about halfway between what the two largest mobile phone makers had sought in a high-profile case that reaches back to 2011," reports CNET. From the report: The bulk of the damages payment, $533,316,606, was for infringing three Apple design patents. The remaining $5,325,050 was for infringing two utility patents. Samsung already had been found to infringe the patents, but this trial determined some of the damages. The jury's rationale isn't clear, but the figure is high enough to help cement the importance of design patents in the tech industry. Even though they only describe cosmetic elements of a product, they clearly can have a lot of value.
Samsung showed its displeasure and indicated the fight isn't over. "Today's decision flies in the face of a unanimous Supreme Court ruling in favor of Samsung on the scope of design patent damages. We will consider all options to obtain an outcome that does not hinder creativity and fair competition for all companies and consumers," Samsung said.
Samsung showed its displeasure and indicated the fight isn't over. "Today's decision flies in the face of a unanimous Supreme Court ruling in favor of Samsung on the scope of design patent damages. We will consider all options to obtain an outcome that does not hinder creativity and fair competition for all companies and consumers," Samsung said.
They already fought it all the way up the chain. The Supreme Court overturned a previous award of $399M and sent it back to the lower court for re-adjudication, because they agreed with Samsung that the 3 design patents for minor little details like rounded corners, a screen that takes up most of the front face, and a shiny black finish were not a substantial enough part of the overall product that Apple should be entitled to their entire profits under a 19th century law intended to protect the designs of ornaments with very simple functional purpose and deriving most of their value from their ornamental design. And now the home jury decides to punish Samsung further for daring to ask for fairness in the award amount by raising it beyond the total amount of profit.
Watching on from the other side of the world, it is sad to see America reduced to tribalism in their political and judicial decision making like this. Everything has become about supporting the home team, and sticking it hard to the opposition.
For some unknown reason, probably dating back to the creation of the USPTO, in the United States an Industrial Design (a form of IP) is, uniquely, referred to as a Design "Patent", even though it's not a patent but instead describes some aspect of a product or item's appearance. For example if you try to copy a Ferrari you will be infringing on the Industrial Design (Design Patent in the US), not on some functional mechanism.
One rather famous Design Patent is for the Q-Ray Bracelet, which covers the shape of the bracelet itself, but in advertising it's implied that there is a "Patent" on it's function as a healing device. There isn't.
Every other nation on Earth refers to this form of IP as a (registered) Industrial Design.
Well, Samsung copied the phone design, the UI and even the box it shipped in. They also debated it in internal emails.
Now, in a court of law you can't just stand up with a phone in each hand and say "look how alike they are, your Honor, what do you think?", instead you have to argue in great detail for each individual bit, such as corner shape/radius, button shape or feel, individual icons, etc. etc.. and then finally bring it to a conclusion. Thus, out of context we end up with the silly rounded corner debacle while the real case covered a lot more ground.