Remember all of those big legal battles between Apple and Samsung that happened a couple of years ago? Those courtroom tiffs haven’t been in the news much lately, but today some new information on the war has emerged.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has upheld the original ruling of a 2012 Apple-Samsung lawsuit that said that Samsung had infringed upon Apple’s patent infringements, but the court disagreed that Samsung had also violated Apple’s trade dress, which is the way a product looks. The appeals court said that the trade dress features that Apple wants to trademark can’t be protected because they’re essential to using the phone, and so if Apple were able to gain a trademark, it’d give the company a monopoly on those features.
Apple was originally awarded around $930 million for this case, but now around $382 million of that total may be removed as part of this trade dress decision. As part of today’s decision, the original San Jose court that awarded Apple the $930 million must review the trade dress portion of the case.
Neither Apple nor Samsung have issued a comment on the appeals court’s decision today. Now that this ruling has been handed down, we’ll have to wait and see what the San Jose court says regarding Apple’s trade dress claims. It’s possible that Apple’s $930 million damages could be reduced by around $382 million if the San Jose court ends up agreeing with the appeals court.