Now assigned for our daily Bloomberg Law Brief, exploring legal issues in the news, and Today Bloomberg La Hoos Doing Grosso and Greg Sture discuss the Supreme Court decision on the ongoing feud between Apple and Samsung over design patents. They speak with Matt Larson, a litigation analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence, and Michael Reich, a professor at Villanova University Law School. Michael explain how the Court came to its decision despite
the traditional interpretation of the language of the statute. Sure, the Court did a relatively straightforward statutory interpretation. It's said, on the one hand, you can get a design patent for an article of manufacture. And we've long recognized for at least fifty years or more that an article of manufactured to get a design patent can be something less than a whole product. Uh So, if we're going to be consistent, then an article of manufacturer when we're talking
about damages, must have the same meaning. And if it has the same meaning, that means that article manufacture can be less than the entire product. It's as simple as that. It's a relatively short opinion. Well, Matt, did the court now say that that the pieces of that were infringed, the parts of the phone that we're infringed are separate from other parts, or what does the federal circuit have to look at here? You know that that's a great question.
The Federal circuits certainly has a lot to work with the court didn't say a whole lot, which you know, frankly sometimes in patent cases is for the better. Um. You know, this case is an area. Design patents generally differ very much between you know, when you look at something like jewelry, where where a design patent might cover an entire article, as opposed to a to a smartphone, where the design patent may just be on the shape of the screen or a button or something like that.
It can be difficult to to bring both of those together. So, you know, assuming that the parties don't settle before additional litigation, I think the Federal Circuit is going to have to parse through how do you identify what the article of manufacturer is? Design patents don't include a whole lot of
written description. It's mostly just a just a picture that you look at, um and it says you know, a design according to to what's depicted and so assuming the case moves forward, there's gonna be a lot of room for parties to argue. How do you go go through and determine what that what that component is, what the separate article is as opposed to the whole device, you know as an article of manufacturer, something that's that's put
together separately and then all piece together. Is it what you can see based on the based on the picture. There are a lot of inquiries that that can be raised on this next time around. That's mad Larsen, a litigation analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence, and Michael Readship, professor at Villanova University Law School, speaking with Bloomberg Law host Joam Grosso. You can listen to Bloomberg Law weekdays at one pm Wall Street Time. Herero on Bloomberg Radio and that's this
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