On October 5, 2016, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in Samsung Electronics Co. v. Apple. In April 2011, Apple sued Samsung Electronics, alleging that Samsung’s smartphones infringed on Apple’s trade dress as well as various design patents for the iPhone. A jury awarded Apple nearly $1 billion in damages, and the trial court upheld most of the award against Samsung’s post-trial challenges. On appeal, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit rejected Samsung’s argument that the district court erred by allowing the jury to award damages based on Samsung’s profits off of its phones in their entirety, rather than just the portion of profits attributable to the smartphone components covered under the design patents. -- The question now before the Supreme Court is whether, where a design patent is applied to only a component of a product, an award of infringer’s profits should be limited to those profits attributable to the component. -- To discuss the case, we have Mark D. Janis, the Robert A. Lucas Chair of Law and Director of the Center for Intellectual Property Research, Maurer School of Law, Indiana University.

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