From PC World: The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled in favor of Samsung Electronics and its backers in the industry in a design patent dispute with Apple, when in a 8-0 decision it said that “the term 'article of manufacture' is broad enough to embrace both a product sold to a consumer and a component of that product, whether sold separately or not.”
But the top court has left a lot unsaid, including by not providing guidance to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on how the damages Samsung has to pay Apple for the infringement of smartphone design patents will have to be calculated. That could also delay for a long time the resolution of the patent dispute between Apple and Samsung, which has already dragged on for a number of years.
As a result of the Supreme Court decision, Apple's damage award does not have to be based on sales of the entire phone but could instead be focused on the value of the particular components claimed in the design patent, said Mark P. McKenna, law professor at University of Notre Dame.
“Unfortunately, the Court did not give lower courts any guidance as to how to determine whether the ‘article of manufacture’ in any given case is the product sold to consumers or a component. Presumably it has something to do with the nature of the design patent claim, but the Court did not make that clear," McKenna, who had co-filed a ‘friend-of-the-court’ brief urging the Supreme Court to hear the Apple v. Samsung case, said in an emailed statement.
View: Article @ Source Site
