On May 24, 2018, a California jury awarded Apple $533M in damages for design patent infringement by Samsung. Apple Inc. v. Samsung Elec. Co., No. 11-cv-01846 (N.D. Cal.). Apple asserted three design patents and a number of utility patents relating to iPhones and iPads against Samsung. The design patents cover ornamental features of smart phone devices including their shape and graphical user interface. After jury trials in 2012 and 2014, Apple was awarded $399M in damages for design patents infringement. The Federal Circuit upheld the damages in 2015 and the U.S. Supreme Court reversed it in 2016. In reversing and remanding the case, the Supreme Court held that in a multicomponent product, the relevant "article of manufacture" for arriving at a Section 289 damages need not be the end product sold to the consumer but may be only a component of that product.
A new trial on damages was held on May 14-18, 2018. The district court adopted a test formulated by the U.S. Solicitor General during the Supreme Court proceedings. The district court instructed the jury to consider the following four factors: (1) the scope of the claimed design in the patent including the drawings and written description; (2) the relative prominence of the design within the infringing product as a whole; (3) whether the design is conceptually distinct from the product as a whole; and (4) the physical relationship between the patented design and the rest of the product, including whether the design pertains to a physically separable, separately sold, or separately manufactured component. The jury then awarded $533M to Apple in design patent damages. The jury verdict form breaks down the damages among 16 Samsung smartphones without any details on the article of manufacture. Apple sought $1B in total lost profits while Samsung urged the jury to limit damages to $28M based on the infringing components.
A new trial on damages was held on May 14-18, 2018. The district court adopted a test formulated by the U.S. Solicitor General during the Supreme Court proceedings. The district court instructed the jury to consider the following four factors: (1) the scope of the claimed design in the patent including the drawings and written description; (2) the relative prominence of the design within the infringing product as a whole; (3) whether the design is conceptually distinct from the product as a whole; and (4) the physical relationship between the patented design and the rest of the product, including whether the design pertains to a physically separable, separately sold, or separately manufactured component. The jury then awarded $533M to Apple in design patent damages. The jury verdict form breaks down the damages among 16 Samsung smartphones without any details on the article of manufacture. Apple sought $1B in total lost profits while Samsung urged the jury to limit damages to $28M based on the infringing components.
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