Facebook, Google and Other Tech Companies Side with Samsung in Apple Patent Case

Samsung has just received the support of a group of Silicon Valley companies: Facebook, Google, Dell, HP, eBay, and others have submitted a “friend of the court” petition warning the US Federal Circuit Court of Appeals over the dangers of upholding the previous ruling that ordered Samsung to turn over profits because it had been infringing several Apple patents, reports Inside Sources.

In the briefing, the tech giants claim the ruling could launch an avalanche of patent infringement lawsuits if upheld by the appeals court.

“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.

You may recall that Apple was awarded $1.05 billion in damages when a US court found that several Samsung devices violated six out of a group of seven Apple patents, including the rectangular shape and rounded corners of the iPhone and the shape of its app icons.

Samsung, of course, appealed against that ruling and ultimately, in a May appeals ruling, the court cut out some of the awarded damages, but Samsung was still ordered to pay the total profit of its infringing Galaxy products to Apple for infringing its patents.

In June, the South Korean manufacturer asked the court to review the decision, arguing that it would “invite overprotection and overcompensation for design patents, free from the limitations imposed in other areas of intellectual property law” and lead to “an explosion of design patent assertions and lawsuits.”

After reading the petition submitted by the tech giants siding with Samsung, Apple’s lawyers commented: “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.”