Apple Inc (AAPL)

[Watson9]

In 2012, a jury ruled that Samsung must pay Apple more than $1 billion for copying the various hardware and software features from the iPhone and iPad. A federal judge later reduced that penalty by $450 million.

Samsung asked the Supreme Court late last year to review $399 million of those damages related to several design patents ...

The court was not asked to weigh in on whether Samsung actually violated various Apple design patents. Instead, the court ruled it's possible a design patent only covers part of a product rather than all of it.

Translation: Just because a company's product copies one or two features from a competitor doesn't necessarily mean it has to forfeit all of that product's profits to its competitor. The case now goes back to a lower court where the two companies will once again take up the issue of how much Samsung should pay in damages for copying iPhone features.

In a statement, Apple said it is "optimistic that the lower courts will again send a powerful signal that stealing isn't right."
"Our case has always been about Samsung's blatant copying of our ideas, and that was never in dispute," it said.