Half of Silicon Valley is coming to help Samsung fight Apple

Coming to Samsung’s aid in the company’s ongoing patent dispute with Apple is… well… everybody. With a cornucopia of tech giants ranging from Facebook, to Google, to Hewlett-Packard, it looks like half of Silicon Valley has come to help out Samsung by asking that the Federal Court of Appeals rehear a decision which resulted in Samsung’s plea for damage litigation in the legal battle being denied. 

Google, Facebook, eBay, H-P and other Silicon Valley players, along with various interest groups, are asking the U.S. Federal Court of Appeals to rehear a decision that denied Samsung’s plea for damage limitations in an ongoing patent lawsuit involving Apple. In a “friend of the court” brief filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on July 1, Dell, eBay, Facebook, Google, Hewlett-Packard, Limelight Networks, Newegg, and SAS Institute spoke out against the panel’s decision to uphold a California jury’s damages award, saying it could stifle innovation in the tech sector. The amicus brief was uncovered by InsideSources on Monday. Samsung, which was found guilty of infringing upon three Apple design patents, was ordered by the Apple v. Samsung jury to pay damages based on the entirety of its smartphone profits. In its appeal, the Korean company argued damages should be limited to profits gained from infringing features.