Apple sued its component supplier Samsung, alleging in a 38-page federal complaint on Apin the United States District Court for the Northern District of California that several of Samsung's Android phones and tablets, including the Nexus S, Epic 4G, Galaxy S 4G, and the Samsung Galaxy Tab, infringed on Apple's intellectual property: its patents, trademarks, user interface and style. It is from these filings along with Apple's utility patents, registered trademarks and trade dress rights, that Apple selected the particular intellectual property to enforce against Samsung. These were followed up in June of that year with a massive filing of a color design patent covering 193 screenshots of various iPhone graphical user interfaces.
On January 4, 2007, 4 days before the iPhone was introduced to the world, Apple filed a suite of 4 design patents covering the basic shape of the iPhone.
was the first of a series of ongoing lawsuits between Apple Inc. Sotomayor, joined by Roberts Kennedy Thomas Ginsburg Breyer Alito KaganĪpple Inc. The “article of manufacture,” as used in Patent Act provision governing damages for design patent infringement, encompasses both a product sold to a consumer and a component of that product, and components of the infringing smartphones could be the relevant “article of manufacture,” although consumers could not purchase those components separately from the smartphones.Ĭhief Justice John Roberts Associate Justices Anthony Kennedy