Apple ‘merits’ award payout

Apple deserved the hundreds of millions of dollars in damages Samsung Electronics paid for infringing patented designs of the iPhone because the product’s distinctive look drives people to purchase it, a group of design industry professionals has told the US Supreme Court.

Setting up a clash with a number of Silicon Valley companies that have come out on the side of Samsung, more than 100 designers and educators signed on to a new court brief supporting Apple.

They include famous fashion names Calvin Klein, Paul Smith and Alexander Wang, the industrial design director at Parsons School of Design, the design director for Bentley Motors, and Tony Chambers, the editor-in-chief of Wallpaper magazine.