The latest chapter in the Apple v. Samsung litigation, previously blogged about here, involves a determination by the Supreme Court of the United States that damages for design patent infringement can be calculated based on only a component of a product, rather than the entire product, if only that component is found to infringe. This is significant because Apple’s $400M damages award was based on Samsung’s total profit for sales of the infringing phones. However, Apple’s design patent only covered certain features of Samsung’s phones, and according to the language of the patent statute, as Samsung argued, it should only have to pay damages on the infringing components, not the entire product.
The Supreme Court agreed with Samsung, but declined to lay down a rule as to how damages should be caculated where an infringing design is incorporated as a component of a larger product and remanded to the Federal Circuit for determination.