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8 

SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS CO. v. APPLE INC. 

Opinion of the Court 

facture because consumers could not purchase those com-
ponents separately from the smartphones.  See 786 F. 3d, 
at 1002 (declining to limit a §289 award to a component of 
the  smartphone  because  “[t]he  innards  of  Samsung’s
smartphones were not sold separately from their shells as 
distinct  articles  of  manufacture  to  ordinary  purchasers”); 
see  also  Nordock,  Inc.  v.  Systems  Inc.,  803  F. 3d  1344, 
1355 (CA Fed. 2015) (declining to limit a §289 award to a
design for a “ ‘lip and hinge plate’ ” because it was “welded 
together” with a leveler and “there was no evidence” it was
sold  “separate[ly]  from  the  leveler  as  a  complete  unit”).
But, for the reasons given above, the term “article of man-
ufacture” is broad enough to embrace both a product sold 
to  a  consumer  and  a  component  of  that  product,  whether 
sold separately or not.  Thus, reading “article of manufac-
ture”  in  §289  to  cover  only  an  end  product  sold  to  a  con-
sumer gives too narrow a meaning to the phrase.

The parties ask us to go further and resolve whether, for
each  of  the  design  patents  at  issue  here,  the  relevant 
article  of  manufacture  is  the  smartphone,  or  a  particular 
smartphone component.  Doing so would require us to set
out  a  test  for  identifying  the  relevant  article  of  manufac-
ture  at  the  first  step  of  the  §289  damages  inquiry  and  to
parse the record to apply that test in this case.  The United 
States  as  amicus  curiae  suggested  a  test,  see  Brief  for 
United States as Amicus Curiae 27–29, but Samsung and 
Apple did not brief the issue.  We decline to lay out a test 
for  the  first  step  of  the  §289  damages  inquiry  in  the  ab-
sence of adequate briefing by the parties.  Doing so is not 
necessary  to  resolve  the  question  presented  in  this  case,
and the Federal Circuit may address any remaining issues
on remand. 

III 
The judgment of the United States Court of Appeals for 
the  Federal  Circuit  is  therefore  reversed,  and  the  case  is