Samsung, in a last-ditch effort to get its 2012 patent loss to Apple overturned, will reportedly try to take its case to the United States Supreme Court. According to the San Jose Mercury News, Samsung is hoping to officially plead its case come November and began filing the requisite paper work this past Wednesday.
“The questions present issues of enormous importance to patent litigation and the scope of innovation, especially in high-technology industries,” Samsung’s brief reads in part.
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Samsung of course found itself on the losing end of 2012 all-encompassing patent trial where Apple took them to the cleaners to the tune of approximately $1 billion. Subsequently, that figure was reduced by a few hundred million per a ruling by the U.S. appeals court. As it stands today, Samsung owes Apple $548 million in damages for patent infringement.
To date, Samsung has yet to pay Apple a penny in damages and it’s clear that the South Korean tech giant will exhaust every option to avoid doing so. The U.S. Supreme Court, naturally, is Samsung’s last remaining hope.
That said, the odds here aren’t stacked in Samsung’s favor. Every year, the Supreme Court receives well over a thousand petitions to review controversial, thorny, and socially impactful legal decisions. And while the original Samsung/Apple patent trial certainly garnered a lot of press, it’s hard to see the legal issues involved therein rising to such a level to warrant Supreme Court attention. Just from an numbers perspective, Samsung’s odds don’t look too strong. Every year, over 7,000 cases are presented to the Court for review. Of that set, the Court each year reviews anywhere from 100 to 150 of them.
If you recall, the jury during Apple and Samsung’s 2012 trial found that a bevy of Samsung products infringed upon iOS UI features such as inertial scrolling and tap to zoom. Apple also took issue with the overall look and feel of Samsung’s UI, claiming that it was a “slavish copy” of the iPhone.
