Why Silicon Valley’s giants are supporting Samsung in its patent fight with Apple

Leading tech companies including Google, Facebook, Dell, and eBay are weighing in on Samsung’s side in the latest skirmish in Apple’s long-running patent war over Android. Earlier in July, a coalition of eight tech giants filed a friend of the court brief in the Federal Circuit court of appeals, which hears all appeals in patent cases. The tech firms agree with Samsung that a key damages calculation approved by a three-judge panel of the appellate court in May not only misread patent law, but if not reversed, would pose a serious risk to all high-tech inventions. “If allowed to stand,” the coalition argues, “that decision will lead to absurd results and have a devastating impact,” especially for tech companies “who spend billions of dollars annually on research and development for complex technologies and their components.”

The appeal was based on a 2011 case, in which a lower court attributed the entire value of several Samsung Galaxy smartphones and tablets to a handful of basic design features patented by Apple. The features at issue are as simple as the rectangular shape and rounded corners of Apple’s devices, as well as its translucent screen and colorful icons. Contradictory treatment of the same product features under patent and trademark law underscores longstanding doubts about the continued value of design patents, especially in software and consumer electronics, whose design and function are increasingly hard to separate. If rounded corners are too functional to be trademarked, in other words, why give them more potent if shorter-lived protection under a design patent, especially when the total-profit rule may apply? A majority of the Federal Circuit’s 12 active judge must agree to rehear the case en banc. If that fails, Samsung could try appealing the panel’s decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.