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General Counsel and In House Counsel Intellectual Property Patent Litigation Regulation

Design Patent Damage Awards

Rotten for Apple

On Dec. 6, 2017, the United States Supreme Court, hearing its first design patent case in over 120 years, unanimously threw away a $400 million award that Apple won against Samsung Electronics. In doing so, the justices interpreted an 1887 statute providing that it is unlawful to manufacture or sell an "article of manufacture" that a patented design or colorable imitation has been applied.

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On Dec. 6, 2017, the United States Supreme Court, hearing its first design patent case in over 120 years, unanimously threw away a $400 million award that Apple won against Samsung Electronics. In doing so, the justices interpreted an 1887 statute providing that it is unlawful to manufacture or sell an “article of manufacture” that a patented design or colorable imitation has been applied. 35 U.S.C. § 289. The penalty for violating this statute (i.e., infringement) is that the infringer is liable to the patent holder “to the extent of his total profit.” Id. The issue before the Court was “whether, in the case of a multi-component product, the relevant ‘article of manufacture’ must always be the end product sold to the consumer or whether it can also be a component of that overall product.” Samsung Elecs. Co. v. Apple Inc., 2016 WL 7078449, at *4 (U.S.Dec. 6, 2016) (hereafter Samsung Electronics).

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