Federal Circuit remands Apple v Samsung clash

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has remanded a suit between Apple and Samsung centring on design patent damages, in the latest development of their long-running smartphone battle.

In December, the US Supreme Court, in an 8-0 decision, reversed a judgment of the Federal Circuit ordering Samsung to pay Apple $399 million in damages for design patent infringement.

The damages were Samsung’s entire profit from the sale of its infringing smartphones, and the patents infringed were US numbers D618,677; D593,087; and D604,305.

The case was then remanded back to the Federal Circuit, which ruled solely on the design patent damages yesterday, February 7.

Chief Judge Sharon Prost and Circuit Judges Kathleen O’Malley and Raymond Chen handed down the decision.

According to the court, Apple requested continued panel review, while Samsung asked the court to remand the suit to the district court for a new trial on damages.

Apple argued that the Federal Circuit could affirm the damages award without additional briefing or argument, because Samsung never asserted that the “relevant article of manufacture was anything other than Samsung’s entire phones”.

On the other hand, Samsung argued that the district court should have provided more detail to account for the fact that “in a multicomponent product, there might be more than one article of manufacture within the meaning of section 289”.

But the court didn’t adopt either course of action, choosing instead to remand the case for further proceedings, which may or may not include a new damages trial.

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