WHAT HAPPENED AT THE SUPREME COURT

The Supreme Court has ruled that the "article of manufacture" addressed within a design patent doesn’t need to be a complete product, contradicting Apple's argument and the history of design patent law. Instead, the article of manufacture can be just part of a product. And as a result, if someone infringes upon a design patent, the patent holder would be entitled to just part of the profits, too.

Notably, the Supreme Court did not decide exactly how this new precedent will work, and its decision is bound to create a new era of debate around design patents. Who will determine if Apple’s rounded icon style is worth 1% of the Samsung Galaxy profits, or 10%, or 99%? How will these arguments be presented? What evidence will the companies need to provide? All of these issues will need to be carefully considered when coming up with a legal "test" that judges can use to determine how much of an infringing company's profits the original patent holder deserves.

Instead of developing this test on their own, SCOTUS is kicking the case back down to the Federal Circuit, which is in charge of dictating how design patents play out in court. "The Supreme Court is saying to the Federal Circuit, ‘your test is wrong, but we’re not picking a new test,’" says Burstein. "They’re sending it back to the Federal Circuit to come up with a new test." It could be many months or even a year before we know what the Federal Circuit decides.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR DESIGNERS?
By the end of the trial, as the companies made their final coque Huawei Y6 2 II case to the Supreme Court, even Apple had ceded some ground on the all-encompassing power of design patents. But no one—not Samsung, not Apple, not even the argument presented by the federal government—offered a full solution at the trial.

"To be really frank with you, this is the best way they could have resolved the case," says Burstein. "Given the strange path to the Supreme Court, I was really worried they were going to pick a test . . . that they didn’t have time to think about." Burstein etui Huawei Ascend Y5 II/ Y5 2 points to 40 years that the Supreme Court has spent ironing out the strange legal issues around cheerleader uniform design. "I don’t think we need 40 years here, but we need more than two minutes," she says.

Now, the Federal Circuit will have time to devise a new approach to proving and parsing the value of individual design patents, and the precedent that follows in the next chapter of Samsung v Apple will determine exactly how design patents are treated in court for many years to come.

"It’s possible they’ll design a rule that makes design patents less housse Google Pixel valuable . . . for right now I don’t think it’s possible to say one way or the other," says Burstein. "I’m sure there will be lots of hand wringing about how design patent is [destroyed], but I don’t think it’s true. In 99% of cases, I think [companies] will still get these things, and they’ll still be scary."