Apple and Samsung will head back again to the district court for yet another iPhone patent damages trial and to determine how much Samsung Electronics Co should pay Apple Inc for copying the look of the iPhone. Judge Lucy Koh, in San Jose, California on Sunday, has signed an order and told both the companies to meet the courtroom again.
This new decision comes after Supreme Court ruling a year ago saying that damages could be determined differently than they typically had been in the past. The damage for the patent infringement can be based only on the part of the device that infringed the patents, not necessarily on the entire product, said the justices said. Apple’s patents majorly covered three design elements; the black rectangular front face, rounded corners, and colorful grid of icons for programs and apps.
This new order comes ten months after the U.S. Supreme Court set aside a $399 million award against Samsung and Apple calls the trail unnecessary and has said that the award should be confirmed. However, Apple did not immediately respond to the new trial order when asked for a comment.
Facebook and Google have opined saying that an Apple win would encourage owners of design patents to sue for huge, unfair awards on products that pack features that are costly to design and develop. However, Samsung has said it deserved reimbursement if it prevailed in the litigation.
The legal dispute is concerned whether the “article of manufacture” for which Samsung owned damages included its entire smartphones or only parts that infringed Apple patents. With that question in mind, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote for the Supreme Court last December saying that “the term ‘article of manufacture’ is broad enough to embrace both a product sold to a consumer and a component of that product.”
Koh in Sunday’s Order writes the jury instructions during the original 2012 trial have inaccurately stated the law on that issue, further commenting she said:
The Court finds that the jury instructions given at trial did not accurately reflect the law and that the instructions prejudiced Samsung by precluding the jury from considering whether the relevant article of manufacture … was something other than the entire phone.
Commenting on the new trial, Samsung said:
We welcome to District Court’s decision for a new trial. This is a historic opportunity to determine how the U.S. Supreme Court’s guidance on design patent damages will be implemented in our case and future cases.