Samsung Beats Apple In The Supreme Court—Here’s What It Means For Design

Samsung Beats Apple In The Supreme Court—Here’s What It Means For Design
After a relatively short deliberation, the Supreme Court has sided unanimously with Samsung in the company’s legal battle with Apple.

In a landmark decision, the court ruled that granular design patents could be treated as just that, granular, rather than the all-encompassing, powerful patents that the law currently describes them as. "Oh, this is good," said Sarah Burstein, associate professor at Oklahoma College of Law, as she read the ruling over the phone with me. "This is exactly what I hoped they would do."

Now, the case will go back to the Federal Circuit for the specifics to etui Google Pixel XL be sorted out. Samsung may or may not recoup hundreds of millions of dollars as a result, but the decision will impact all companies filing design patents for years to come. Here's a breakdown of what happened and why it matters.

[Photo: via SCOTUSblog]
WHAT WAS AT STAKE?
In December of 2015, Samsung was forced to pay Apple its complete profits from 19 Samsung products that were found to infringe on Apple patents by the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit—a staggering $548 million. But Samsung was hoping to get $399 million of that money back. You see, Samsung wasn’t found guilty of copying the iPhone as a singular invention. Rather, it was found guilty of infringing upon three specific design patents: The rounded corners on the front of the iPhone, the rounded corners plus a housse Wiko Rainbow 4G rounded bezel of the iPhone, and a grid of app icons you see in iOS.

Those might seem like small details, but because of a century of strange legal precedent, ripping off even the smallest design patents can cost the infringer the complete profits of their product, or what the law describes as the "article of manufacture." As such, Samsung owed its entire profits from each infringing product, resulting in the massive payment it made to Apple last year coque Wiko Rainbow Lite 4G.

By appealing to SCOTUS, Samsung was hoping to prove that those granular patents weren't worth all $548 million—and in doing so, challenged legal precedent about the power of design patents.