The U.S. Justice Department has asked that the Supreme Court overturn a smartphone patent litigation favoring Apple over Samsung, Reuters reports.
The case stretches back to a 2012 jury verdict in which Samsung was ordered to pay Apple $930 million for multiple patent infringements by a wide range of Samsung devices. The amount was later reduced to $548 million by an appeals court, although the original patent infringement claims were upheld.
Samsung initially agreed to the reduced amount last December, however subsequently appealed the case to the U.S.
Supreme Court less than two weeks later, claiming that the 1887 law cited in the case is “outdated and too punitive for modern products such as a smartphone,” suggesting that courts should not award damages based on the total profits from a product where an infringed patent applies only to a single component of the product, rather than the product in its entirety. In an amicus brief filed on Wednesday, the Justice Department suggested that it was unclear whether Samsung had originally produced enough evidence to support this argument, and recommended that the Supreme Court send the case back for the trial court to determine whether a new trial should be held based on that issue.
