The US Supreme Court on December 7th threw out a $400 million damages award that Apple won against Samsung in their heated patent war, ruling Samsung’s penalty for infringing Apple’s smartphone design patents may be limited to components of the phone, rather than the entire product.
In an 8-0 ruling, the high court reversed a Federal Circuit ruling that found Samsung must pay its profits from the entire phones found to infringe Apple’s design patents, which covered the front face of the phones and the arrangement of icons on the home screen.
The Supreme Court declined to resolve whether, for each of the design patents at issue in the case, the article of manufacture was the smartphone or a component of the phone. It left it up to the Federal Circuit to address the issue on remand.

Source: LAW360