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posted by Fnord666 on Monday May 14 2018, @02:45PM   Printer-friendly
from the round-3 dept.

It's go time for that legal battle that refuses to die: Apple v. Samsung.

The two smartphone giants will meet in a San Jose, California, court for a week starting Monday to determine how much Samsung owes for illegally using three Apple design patents and two utility patents. The lawsuit, initially filed in 2011, made it all the way to the Supreme Court in late 2016 before being sent back to the lower court. This will be the third district court trial for the case.

Samsung has already been found to infringe Apple's patents. The argument centers on how much it owes Apple for copying some of its patented features, like the rectangular shape of the iPhone. Previously, Samsung paid $548 million, and $399 million of that is being reconsidered in this trial.

The South Korean company hopes to pay less by using a Supreme Court decision that changed how the parties may calculate the damages.

[...] Only $399 million of the $548 million paid to Apple -- considered the "additional remedy" amount under Section 289 of the Patent Act of 1952 (35 U.S.C. 289) -- is being examined in the 2018 retrial. The additional $149 million in damages Samsung paid Apple isn't at stake.

Now that the Supreme Court has said damages can be based on a portion of a product, not necessarily the entire infringing device, Samsung hopes the jury will award a smaller damages amount to Apple.

[...] In December 2015, Samsung asked the Supreme Court to examine the decisions reached by lower courts. It wanted the nation's highest court to determine whether design patent damages could be based on part of a device, not the entire gadget.

The court accepted the request and held a hearing in October 2016 -- the first time it had examined a design patent case since the 1800s. It ultimately agreed with Samsung and said damages could be determined differently than in the past.

Apple and Samsung faced off at the Supreme Court in October 2016. 

That ruling reshaped the value of designs and how much one company may have to pay for copying the look of a competitor's product. Previously, an infringing "article of manufacture" was considered an entire device. Now an article of manufacture can be only a small portion of a device, which would limit the amount of damages that can be awarded.

Instead of making a decision on the damages themselves, the justices sent the case back to the lower court to determine the process for deciding how much money is owed for infringement.

That's the crux of this trial. Though the Supreme Court decision said an article of manufacture could be based on which part of a product infringes a patent, instead of the entire product, it didn't say how to decide that.


Original Submission

Related Stories

Apple and Samsung Settle Long-Running Patent War 8 comments

Apple, Samsung Resolve Smartphone Design Fight After 7 Years

Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. reached a settlement in their U.S. patent battle, ending a seven-year fight over smartphone designs that spanned the globe.

The string of lawsuits started in 2011 after Steve Jobs, Apple's co-founder who died that year, threatened to go "thermonuclear" on rivals that used the Android operating system and accused Samsung of "slavishly" copying the iPhone design. The companies didn't disclose the terms of the accord and didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.

The ensuing litigation cost each company hundreds of millions of dollars in legal fees and tested their reputations as innovators. Wednesday's settlement resolved the last outstanding dispute.

"The sumo wrestlers have tired of the wrestling match," said Paul Berghoff, a patent lawyer with McDonnell Boehnen Hulbert & Berghoff in Chicago who followed the cases over the years. "They both were tired and happy to stop paying the outside lawyers. We may never know who blinked first, who made the call."

Also at Axios.

Previously: Apple Wants to Ban Samsung Products - Again!
Four years later, Rounded Corners are Fair Game
Apple Wants Samsung to Cough Up $180M More in Patent Dispute
Supreme Court Says Samsung Doesn't Owe Apple $400 Million in Damages for Copying iPhone Look
Apple v. Samsung Proceeds to Fourth Jury Trial
Apple And Samsung Face Off In Court Over Design Patents Once Again


Original Submission

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  • (Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Monday May 14 2018, @03:33PM (2 children)

    by bzipitidoo (4388) on Monday May 14 2018, @03:33PM (#679597) Journal

    > how much it owes Apple for copying ... the rectangular shape

    You can patent basic shapes such as the rectangle? If so, that's some seriously hyperbolic legal expansion of patent law! But I suspect the reporting is misrepresenting and exaggerating matters just a tiny bit.

    • (Score: 2) by ledow on Monday May 14 2018, @03:49PM

      by ledow (5567) on Monday May 14 2018, @03:49PM (#679604) Homepage

      Er... nope.

      Google for "rounded corners patent"

    • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday May 14 2018, @04:07PM

      by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Monday May 14 2018, @04:07PM (#679612) Journal

      Here is something I remember from a few years ago. I don't have a link to substantiate it. Sorry.

      In a foreign court spat between Apple vs Samsung over a Samsung Tablet, Apple argued, with a straight face that out of the universe of design possibilities Samsung could have chosen to make its tablets with wider bezels and not as thin or light weight.

      So Thin, Light and Slim Bezels are exclusive Apple design inventions.

      So what's wrong with Apple owning basic shapes like Rectangles?

      I mean gee, can't others be creative enough to design phones in other shapes? Especially those who were in the cell phone business for decades before Apple joined the party in 2007.

      Don't get me started with Slide To Unlock, or heaven forbid Bouncy Scrolling.

      In the cell phone industry, it was well understood that a flip phone is protected from waking up in your pocket by detecting whether the phone has been flipped open. For "candy bar" phones with exposed buttons, it was well understood that you require some unusual keypress sequence, like holding down a key or two keys (and only those keys) for slightly longer than would accidentally happen in your pocket.

      Any engineer presented with a design problem of having only one "wake up" button would instantly understand that to protect from accidental presses of the wake button, some kind of on-screen gesture is required. And that gesture is going to involve some kind of a swipe in some direction. Or multiple directions as in the pattern unlock, or a PIN. The point being there is a very limited set (about 3) of solutions. All modern phones offer all three.

      If Apple had invented cars, then every car would have completely different ways of steering, applying the brakes breaks etc. The steering wheel is patented. Headlights are patented.

      As someone who once was a huge Apple fanboy and developer in the Classic Mac days, I have little love for Apple these days.

      --
      People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
  • (Score: 3, Funny) by Thexalon on Monday May 14 2018, @06:16PM

    by Thexalon (636) on Monday May 14 2018, @06:16PM (#679690)

    Can I root for both parties in a case like this to lose?

    --
    The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 14 2018, @07:32PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 14 2018, @07:32PM (#679731)

    this is why we need anonymous companies, but with accountability of the entity built in to the platform. blockchain powered, of course. These fat dinosaurs are holding back global human progress.

  • (Score: 1) by kanweg on Monday May 14 2018, @09:15PM

    by kanweg (4737) on Monday May 14 2018, @09:15PM (#679783)

    It is not a patent (which requires an invention, i.e. a solution to a technical problem; and which must be New and Inventiveness to be valid), but a *design* patent. That first word makes all the difference. It is just about looks. Like a bottle of Coca cola can be recognized by its particular shape it is not a better bottle than a pepsi bottle. A design patent relates to the looks only. The scope of protection of a design patent is quite limited. So, yes, you can get protection for the particular shape. There are other shapes to choose from. You can market bottles with cola, no problem. Just make sure that if people see the bottle, they are not confused into thinking it is Coca cola.

    Bert

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