Seems like Christmas came early for Samsung!
Last week, a landmark ruling in given on one of the most popular patent battles between Samsung-Apple on writ of certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Justice S. Sotomayor delivered the court opinion on the writ of certiorari which says that Samsung doesn’t have to give up its entire profit to Apple as damages – $399 million.
Below are some parts of the decision:
Simply put, the Court has changed the way damages are evaluated. Now, damages will be limited to the component and contribution of that component in revenue, contrary to the earlier ruling where damages were considered on full product revenue. This ruling can give defendants a sigh of relief in the ongoing design patent lawsuits.
The court basically punted. It seems to have clearly in its mind that the patent could cover only a portion of the device. But it said, ‘We’re not going to tell you what the right rule is.
– Mark A. Lemley, a law professor and director of the Stanford Program in Law, Science and Technology
This decision, no doubt, is going to affect a lot of active design patent litigation. Below we have compiled a list of 29 such cases that are going to get affected due to the SCOTUS’ decision:
If you look at the list closely, you will find that not only companies of the smartphone but from automobiles, e-cigarette are also going to fall under the purview of the decision. It would be interesting to see what the future brings for these defendants. Similar to this, PTAB recently affirmed an Examiner’s rejection that like the Alice Decision seems to open a new door for invalidating method patents. You can read in detail about it here: A decision that can invalidation a lot of method patents
Authored by: Sonu Saini, Research Analyst, Patent Search Team
P.S. We recently compiled a design patent search guide having 7 unconventional Design Patent search strategies that could help you find a hidden design prior to art. You can download your free guide here: Click here to download
