On the last day allowed, Samsung has filed its brief with the Supreme Court for an appeal of its legal battle with Apple. In its brief, Samsung spells out that design patents are overvalued when tried for damages, and "at a minimum, a new trial is necessary" to determine damages that the Korean company owes the Cupertino manufacturer.
According
to SCOTUSblog, the Samsung
petition has been granted only to a single query. Question 2 concerns the amount payable in infringement suits, specifically "Where a design patent is applied to only a component of a product, should an award of infringer's profits be limited to those profits attributable to the component?" Typically, the infringement damages are based upon the entire profit of the device's sale, with Samsung effectively asking if it should in fact be a reduced figure due to the infringement only applying to part of a device.
The 76-page brief covers hundreds of previous case rulings, pointing to the fact that if damages are owed because of design patent violations, then only the feature that uses the design patent in question's value should be assessed, not the entire cost of the device.
Samsung has already received a partial victory with regards to how much it owes for the infringement, with the original
$1.1 billion jury award cut down to $548 million, a figure it has
already paid but potentially wants redress if the Supreme Court takes its side. Apple is also trying to get another
$179 million from the South Korean electronics giant, for interest owed and for other Samsung devices sold since the 2012 verdict that allegedly infringe on the same patents.
In a statement about today's filing, Samsung said that "if the current ruling is left to stand, it would value a single design patent over the hundreds of thousands of groundbreaking technology patents, leading to vastly overvalued design patents."
Samsung opening brief in Apple case at US Supreme Court by MacNN
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