The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, D.C., has partly reversed the $930 million ruling Apple won against Samsung in the patent infringement lawsuit closely watched by the tech world, reports Reuters.
You may recall that Apple scored a major victory against Samsung in a San Jose court when a number of Samsung’s smartphones were found to be violating Apple’s patents. While the original verdict was more than $1 billion, it was later revised to $930 million.
Samsung appealed against this revised ruling, and today was on the winning side: While some of the patent infringement claims are valid, the appeals court ordered the San Jose court to rethink the $382 million part awarded for what’s called in legal terms trade dress dilution.
Trade dress essentially describes the way a product is presented – in Apple’s case, the design of the iPhone. The appeals court says the design features “Apple sought to trademark” are not eligible, because it would grant the company a “monopoly on these features forever”, and, by the way, are not essential to the functioning of the device.
