Designers side with Apple in Samsung patent appeal

More than 100 global design professionals on Thursday offered support to
Apple in its long-running patent design battle with Samsung, now before the
US Supreme Court.

The group, which includes US fashion designer Calvin Klein, UK designer
Paul Smith, Belgium designer Dries van Noten and Nicolas Ghesquiere of the
French group Louis Vuitton have joined an amicus brief supporting Apple’s
contention that Samsung’s 548 million US dollar penalty for infringing on a
design patent should stand.

The case is expected to result in a landmark decision on whether total
profits from an unlawfully copied design should be assessed as a penalty,
in the first major design patent case at the top US court in over a century.

The amicus brief filed on behalf of design professionals, researchers and
academics said they have no financial interest in the case but argue on the
basis of “fundamental principles of visual design.” They cite precedents
like the Coca-Cola bottle, which is an integral part of the value of the
product, according to the brief.

“The history of industrial design and the experience of America’s most
profitable industries demonstrate that a product’s visual design becomes
the product itself in the mind of consumers,” they argued.

“It is the design of a successful product that embodies the consumer’s
understanding of and desire to own and interact with it.” Other signatories
of the brief include Bentley Motors designer Stefan Hans Sielaff, Terence
Conran of Conran Holdings and US fashion designer Alexander Wang.

A photo posted by Samsung Mobile (@samsungmobile) on Jun 7, 2016 at 5:01am PDT

Clash with tech firms

The arguments run counter to those offered by many in the technology
industry, who claim that upholding the award will only encourage frivolous
suits filed by “patent trolls” that make no products.

A brief filed earlier this year by Google, Facebook, eBay, Dell,
Hewlett-Packard Enterprise and others said allowing the award to stand
“will lead to absurd results and have a devastating impact on companies…
that spend billions of dollars annually on research and development for
complex technological products and their components.”

The tech firms argued that awarding a design patent holder 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.”

A California jury ruled that Samsung had infringed on the US firm’s patent
for the iPhone, including for its design, in smartphones made by the South
Korean giant. The Supreme Court in February agreed to hear the case,
opening the door to reducing the hundreds of millions of dollars in damages
owed in the blockbuster patent case between the world’s biggest smartphone
makers.

A photo posted by Samsung Mobile (@samsungmobile) on Mar 2, 2016 at 5:01am PST

The justices will not reconsider Samsung’s guilt, but will look at whether
the penalty was excessive for copyright infringement of certain electronic
components. Samsung last year agreed to pay Apple some 548 million US
dollars, pending the outcome of the appeal.

But Samsung argued that 399 million US dollars of the penalty was excessive
because it was based on the premise that “Apple was ‘entitled to’ those
entire profits no matter how little the patented design features
contributed to the value of Samsung’s phones,” according to the appeal
brief. (AFP)

Photos: Iphone6, Pexels.com and Apple.com