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PublishedJanuary 19, 2016

CCIA Asks Supreme Court to Weigh in on Apple v. Samsung Case

Last Friday, we filed a brief in the Samsung v. Apple case. The issue we addressed was the proper damages rule for [define term=”design patent”] infringement. The Federal Circuit held that Apple was entitled to all of Samsung’s profits for several smartphone models that were found to use some ornamental designs of Apple’s.

The rule itself is ridiculous; there are so many inventions used in a smartphone, there’s no way to justify (from a policy perspective) awarding all the profits of the phone based on, say, the shape of the outer case. We argued that this expansion of design patents goes beyond Congress’ power to issue patents. We also pointed out that there’s another statute, the Vessel Hull Design Protection Act, that uses similar terminology to the design patent statute, and it’s clear in that context that the Federal Circuit misinterpreted the law.

We’ll see in the coming weeks if the Supreme Court agrees that the case is important enough to take.

Matt Levy

Previously, Matt was patent counsel at the Computer & Communications Industry Association

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