Samsung made good on its promise to take its patent fight with Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) to the nation's highest court. The Korean manufacturer took to the Supreme Court to appeal a $399 million judgment for illegally copying patented features and designs of the iPhone.
The company hopes the court opts to review design patents for the first time in more than 120 years. Samsung claims the jury wasn't given enough information about the purpose of design patents and that the damages awarded to Apple were inflated considering the relative unimportance of the patented features at the heart of the case.
Samsung claims that the processes for awarding patents and calculating damages need to be reinterpreted for modern technologies.
"Compounding this problem," Samsung wrote in its filing, "the Federal Court allowed the jury to award Samsung's entire profits from the sale of smartphones found to contain the patented designs -- here totaling $399 million. It held that Apple was 'entitled' to those profits no matter how little the patented design features contributed to the value of Samsung's phones."
Samsung earlier this month agreed to pay Apple $548 million to settle the case, which began in 2011, but Samsung claimed in that agreement that it retained the right to obtain reimbursement from Apple based on future rulings. Samsung had announced its intentions earlier this year to request a Supreme Court review of the case.
The Court is expected to decide whether it will hear the case in the next few months.
For more:
- see this Re/code article
- read this Samsung filing
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