Supreme Court to hear Samsung appeal against Apple News
Supreme Court to hear Samsung appeal against Apple

The US Supreme Court [official website] on Monday announced [text, PDF] that it will hear Samsung‘s appeal against Apple [corporate websites] regarding Apple’s 2012 victory in a patent dispute. The appeal deals with the amount awarded to Apple, which in December 2015 was set at $548 million in a settlement agreement [JURIST report], and claims that the $399 million that applies to “infringing on the designs of the iPhone’s rounded-corner front face, bezel and colorful grid of icons” was awarded based on full profits from the phone sales, whereas those features “contributed only marginally to a complex device” [Reuters report]. Samsung is moving forward with the support of Google, Facebook, and eBay [corporate websites], who say the lower decision was inconsistent with today’s technology [Bloomberg report]. The Supreme Court denied the part of the appeal dealing with whether Samsung infringed on Apple’s design patents.

This is the most recent installment of the ongoing patent dispute [JURIST op-ed] between the two electronics giants. In February the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit [official website] overturned [opinion, PDF] a 2014 verdict [materials] against Samsung in its patent infringement conflict with Apple. In January the US District Court for the Northern District of California [official website] granted [JURIST report] Apple’s motion for a permanent injunction against Samsung for infringing upon three software patents. In August 2014 the US District Court for the Northern District of California denied [JURIST report] Apple’s request to ban Samsung from selling any of its products that infringed on Apple’s patented technology. Earlier in August 2014 Apple and Samsung agreed to drop [JURIST report] all patent infringement lawsuits in courts outside of the US. In June 2014 Apple and Samsung also agreed to dismiss [JURIST report] their appeals of a patent infringement case at the US International Trade Commission [official website] that resulted in an import ban on some older model Samsung phones.

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