FOSS Patent reports that on August 5, 2015, the Central Reexamination Division of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has issued a non-final rejection in the reexamination of the U.S. Design Patent No. 618,677, one of the key iPhone design patents in the Apple vs. Samsung lawsuit.
FOSS Patent reports that the USPTO considers the iPhone design patent also referred to as “D’677” invalid on multiple grounds:
The problem the D’677 patent faces here is that the USPTO has determined (for now) that this patent “is not entitled to benefit of the filing date” of two previous Apple design patent applications because the design at issue was not disclosed in those earlier applications. As a result, certain prior art is eligible now, and against the background of that additional prior art, the USPTO believes the patent shouldn’t have been granted. [..]The bottom line is that Apple’s design patent enforcement faces two kinds of legitimacy problems: widespread opposition against the idea that unapportioned disgorgement of profits is an appropriate remedy for design patent infringement by highly complex technology product (imagine what would happen if someone tried to collect all of Facebook’s profits over a single icon) and now the USPTO’s assessment that one of those iPhone design patents is actually invalid.
It remains to be seen what ramifications this will have on the Apple vs. Samsung lawsuit. The U.S. Federal Circuit Court of Appeals had recently rejected Samsung’s appeal to reconsider the ruling that upheld $548 million damages that the Korean company owes to Apple for infringing its patents.
In 2012, a jury had ordered Samsung to pay $1.09 billion in damages for willfully infringing on Apple patents in 23 products. This was later reduced the damages to $900 million after the judge found that the jury had miscalculated the damages due to a misunderstanding of patent issues.
Earlier this year, the Appeals court had ruled that Samsung had infringed on Apple’s design and utility patent but wasn’t in violation of “trade dress”, and therefore didn’t owe as much as previously awarded by courts. The U.S. Appeals court had reduced the damages from $932 million to $548 million.
Patently-O blog believes that “Samsung will almost certainly” file an appeal with the Supreme Court, and USPTO’s decision to invalidate a key iPhone design patent will certainly help Samsung.
Thanks Brandon for the tip!
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