A US judge has ordered a new trial to determine how much Samsung Electronics Co should pay Apple Inc for copying the look of the iPhone.
US District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California, issued her order on Sunday, 10 months after the US Supreme Court set aside a US$399 million award against Samsung.
The three Apple patents covered design elements of the iPhone such as its black rectangular front face, rounded corners and colorful grid of icons for programs and apps.
Photo: Reuters
Koh’s order is a setback for Apple, which called a retrial unnecessary and said the award should be confirmed.
Silicon Valley has closely followed the case that is six-and-a-half years old.
Companies such as Facebook Inc and Alphabet Inc’s Google have said that an Apple win would encourage owners of design patents to sue for huge, unfair awards on products containing hundreds of features that are costly to develop.
The US$399 million represented profit from Samsung’s sales of infringing smartphones, although the South Korean company has said it deserved reimbursement if it prevailed in the litigation.
It was part of a US$548 million payment that Samsung made to Apple in December 2015.
The legal dispute concerned whether the “article of manufacture” for which Samsung owed damages included the entire phone, or only parts that infringed on Apple patents.
Without deciding that question, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote for the Supreme Court on Dec. 6 last year that “the term ‘article of manufacture’ is broad enough to embrace both a product sold to a consumer and a component of that product.”
In Sunday’s order, Koh said that the jury instructions at the original 2012 trial inaccurately stated the law on that issue.
She said Samsung might have been prejudiced if jurors were prevented from considering whether any infringement covered “something other than the entire phone.”
Apple contended that the jury instructions were “not erroneous” and said it had proved that Samsung applied its patented designs to its “entire phones.”
Jurors initially awarded US$1.05 billion to Apple, which was later reduced.
Samsung in a statement welcomed a new trial, calling it “a historic opportunity to determine how the US Supreme Court’s guidance on design patent damages will be implemented.”
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