Last week we posted a report titled "While the Court Rejects Samsung's Appeal in Apple Case, Expect this to go to the Supreme Court." Big surprise: Samsung plans to ask the U.S. Supreme Court by November to hear its appeal of a San Jose federal jury's stinging 2012 verdict that found the South Korean tech giant violated Apple's iPhone patents.

Mercury News reported that "In court papers filed Wednesday, Samsung moved to put its ongoing patent feud with Apple on hold while it presses its appeal to the nation's high court, which will have an opportunity to weigh in on perhaps the most high-profile tech showdown in recent memory.

Samsung's legal team wrote in a bid to hold off paying Apple hundreds of millions of dollars in damages for the patent violations that 'The questions present issues of enormous importance to patent litigation and the scope of innovation, especially in high-technology industries.'"

The timing of a FOSS Patents report this week titled "U.S. patent office considers Apple's D'677 iPhone design patent invalid on multiple grounds," was in my opinion no accident.

Of course the USPTO invalidating a patent isn't the last word and we posted a report back in 2012 with statistics from the U.S. Patent Office showing that in the majority of these cases the ruling is eventually overturned with modest modifications. The noise about the invalidity of the case was made to get headlines needed to bolster Samsung's case.

Apple's appeal process could take years and so Samsung wants to walk into the Supreme Court with the patent in question already deemed invalid to make their case appear more solid in the press than it is. It's just the Samsung way of doing business.

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