Apple urges Supreme Court to reject Samsung petition

Apple has urged the US Supreme Court to reject Samsung’s petition to reverse a ruling that found the South Korean company had infringed three design patents.

In its opposition brief, Apple defended the $399 million awarded to it by both the US District Court for the Northern District of California and the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

The case has attracted companies' attention in the technology industry, and they have argued that awarding the total profits generated from an infringing device is out of touch with “economic realities”.

Under section 289 of the US code, a patent owner can collect the total profits of a product derived from an infringing device.

In its opposition brief, filed this week, Apple said: “The iPhone’s explosive success was due in no small part to its innovative design, which included a distinctive font face and a colourful graphical user interface.

“The decisions broke no new legal ground; they simply applied the statute and well-settled law to the extraordinary record of infringement and copying in this case,” it continued.

The three disputed patents cover the iPhone’s graphical user interface and the shape of the device.

In its brief Apple also cited the development of Samsung phones following the release of the iPhone in 2007.

Apple said Samsung’s phones had developed from “walkie-talkie-like boxes with bulky antennas and keyboards” to devices that are “beyond coincident[ally]” similar to Apple’s product.

Samsung filed its writ of certiorari in December and has received the backing of Google, Facebook, eBay and Dell.

In an amicus brief jointly filed by the technology companies last month, they argued that “awarding a design patentee the total profit from an infringer’s product when the design covers only a relatively minor portion of the product is out of proportion with the significance of the design and out of touch with economic realities”.