Apple and Samsung have been involved in a legal battle over the look and feel of the latter's devices, since 2011. The initial verdict had gone in Apple's favor with the court ordering Samsung to pay up over a billion dollars to Apple, but over the years Samsung has managed to get the amount reduced to about 400 million dollars through retrials. Now, just when things were looking to have settled, the Korean company has gained yet another chance to dispute the damages from the verdict so far.
According to FOSS Patents, a new test will be presented to the parties to make their argument in the case and the winning factors are now based on finer details about the design than earlier. These factors are as follows:
- "[T]he scope of the design claimed in the plaintiff's patent, including the drawing and written description";
- "[T]he relative prominence of the design within the product as a whole";
- "[W]hether the design is conceptually distinct from the product as a whole"; and
- "[T]he physical relationship between the patented design and the rest of the product," including whether "the design pertains to a component that a user or seller can physically separate from the product as a whole," and whether "the design is embodied in a component that is manufactured separately from the rest of the product, or if the component can be sold separately."
Samsung and Apple will have to propose a case schedule for the retrial later today, which is the deadline set by Judge Lucy Koh. FOSS Patents mentions that there is a 30 percent chance of the companies settling the dispute out of court before the trial goes through, especially since Apple is also involved in another billion dollar lawsuit against Qualcomm of late and also due to its partnership with Samsung for the iPhone X.
It will be interesting to see how things turn out in this retrial, as the case still remains a crucial one for design patent lawsuits in the future.
Source: FOSS Patents | Image via Brian Turner
15 Comments - Add comment