Supreme Court Set to Hear Apple v. Samsung

The latest chapter in the Apple v. Samsung saga, previously blogged about here, is set to play out during oral arguments in front of the United States Supreme Court this fall. Samsung was found to infringe several of Apple’s design patents related to specific design features of a smartphone, and not necessarily an entire phone. 35 U.S.C. § 289 authorizes courts to award the total profit from the article of manufacture bearing the design. Thus, the original damage award was based on Samsung’s profits from the sales of the smartphone. The Supreme Court, however, will hear the question of whether, where a design patent is applied to only a component of a product, an award of infringer’s profits should be limited to those profits attributable to the component.