Scotuscast

On December 6, 2016, the Supreme Court decided Samsung Electronics Co. v. Apple. In April 2011, Apple sued Samsung Electronics, alleging that Samsung’s smartphones infringed on Apple’s trade dress as well as various design patents for the iPhone. A jury awarded Apple nearly $1 billion in damages under Section 289 of the Patent Act, and the trial court upheld most of the award against Samsung’s post-trial challenges. On appeal, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit rejected Samsung’s argument that the district court erred by allowing the jury to award damages based on Samsung’s profits off of its phones in their entirety, rather than just the portion of profits attributable to the smartphone components covered under the design patents. -- The question before the Supreme Court was whether, where a design patent is applied to only a component of a product, an award of infringer’s profits should be limited to those profits attributable to the component. -- By a vote of 8-0, the Supreme Court rever