SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the get-your-round-corners-here,-going-cheap! dept.
Supreme court unanimously rules on design patent, first time in over 100 years.
Samsung walks away with a win from a unanimous ruling from the supreme court about the ongoing design suite initiated by Apple back in 2012. The case goes back to the lower courts to determine the damages of the infringement on design only, not the entirety of the product. Hopefully this will bring some sanity to the patent wars and reduce the $399 million award to Apple.
"Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor said that damages could be calculated based on the entire profit of an infringing product or based on only part of the product's profit."
"...or based on only part of the product's profit." is the significant part of the judgement.
https://www.cnet.com/news/samsung-apple-scores-supreme-court-win-patent-design-infringement-case/
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/12/06/504545297/supreme-court-sides-with-samsung-against-apple-in-patent-infringement-fight
http://www.theverge.com/2016/12/6/13854354/apple-samsung-patent-battle-supreme-court-damages-calculation
And from the LA Times we get:
The Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled for Samsung in its patent dispute with Apple and set aside a $400-million damages verdict for copying the look of the iPhone.
The justices dealt only with the question of how much the South Korean firm should pay for copying several design features of Apple's smartphone.
A jury had found that Samsung copied several features of Apple's patented design, and a judge said the South Korean firm should pay out its "entire profit" from the sale of its smartphones.
Those damages of $399 million were upheld by a federal appeals court, but they were set aside by the high court in an 8-0 decision Tuesday.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 07 2016, @07:07AM
Think the 'all profits' is for the cases where you could mistake one product for another. I do not think most people would confuse an iphone for a galaxy. There probably are a few but they would be rare.