Dell, Facebook, Google, Newegg, SAS Institute, Hewlett-Packard and Limelight Networks have filed a “friend of the court” briefing with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit against the court’s decision in the Apple v. Samsung case.
In the case, which Samsung lost, it was adjudged that Korean company infringed on at least three of the patented features from Apple and was required to pay the company in damages based on the “total profits” it had earned by selling those smartphones. However, companies like Google, Facebook and others are appealing against this decision of the court by arguing that such a result can have huge repercussions in the industry down the line.
“If allowed to stand, that decision will lead to absurd results and have a devastating impact on companies, including [the briefing draftees], who spend billions of dollars annually on research and development for complex technologies and their components,” the group wrote in its brief to the court earlier this month.
The companies argue that smartphones, smart TVs and other similar equipments are extremely complex in nature and are made up of thousands of components. Therefore, lumping all the components into one legal term — “article of manufacture” — is wrong.
Apple argued the filing of these companies and said that they should be dismissed since these companies are not impartial.
“Google has a strong interest in this particular case, is not an impartial ‘friend of the court,’ and should not be permitted to expand Samsung’s word limit under the guise of an amicus brief,” Apple told the court.
This is the same case in which Samsung was initially ordered to pay a fine of $930 million, but after it was found out that Samsung did not infringe on the ‘trade dress’ of the iPhone, around $382 million of the fine amount was thrown out. The remaining amount was considered to be Samsung’s “total profit” from selling its Galaxy devices that made use of three of the patented technologies used by Apple.
[Via Inside Sources]
No comments:
Post a Comment