The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Monday to hear Samsung Electronics’ appeal of the damages it was ordered to pay for infringing on Apple’s design patents.
Samsung previously paid Apple $548 million in damages awarded by a lower court for copying designs of the iPhone. In December last year, Samsung took the case to the highest court, asking it to reconsider the scope of design patents and how damages are calculated, in an effort to knock up to $399 million off the total damages.
The South Korean smartphone giant claimed that while “a patented design might be the essential feature of a spoon or rug, the same is not true of smartphones, which contain countless other features that give them remarkable functionality wholly unrelated to their design.”
On Monday, the Supreme Court said that Samsung’s request has been granted.
It marks the first design patents case the highest U.S. court has taken up in 120 years. The last Supreme Court cases over design patents involved spoon handles in the 1870s and carpets in the 1890s.
The court is expected to hear arguments and rule in the nine-month term starting in October.
(khnews@heraldcorp.com)