Rosenblum, Darren; Salomão Filho, Calixto; Pinto Ido, Vitor Henrique --- "Emerging global giants: the legal infrastructure and structural causes of economic monopoly: Samsung" [2019] ELECD 142; in Muir Watt, Horatia; Bíziková, Lucia; Brandão de Oliveira, Agatha; Fernandez Arroyo, P. Diego (eds), "Global Private International Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2019) 212

Book Title: Global Private International Law

Editor(s): Muir Watt, Horatia; Bíziková, Lucia; Brandão de Oliveira, Agatha; Fernandez Arroyo, P. Diego

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN: 9781788119221

Section: Chapter 10

Section Title: Emerging global giants: the legal infrastructure and structural causes of economic monopoly: Samsung

Author(s): Rosenblum, Darren; Salomão Filho, Calixto; Pinto Ido, Vitor Henrique

Number of pages: 24

Abstract/Description:

Samsung controls a large part of the world market in electronics and related goods. In this respect, it provides a fascinating example of economy-wide specialisation in global value chains. The comments below look at the legal and institutional infrastructure that supports this situation of economic quasi-monopoly. One focuses on the power derived from intellectual property and looks at the anatomy of the recent high-profile smart phone dispute in the US Supreme Court. The other explores the makings of the corruption, bribery and political scandal that has dogged the footsteps of the chaebol electronics conglomerate as it takes off as a world player. It provides a perfect opportunity to compare the structural, political and cultural conditions in which similar phenomena affect emerging varieties and forms of monopolistic capitalism across the globe. In a high-profile patents case in US federal court, a jury found that various smartphones manufactured by Samsung infringed design patents owned by Apple Inc. These covered a ‘rectangular front face with rounded edges and a grid of colorful icons on a black screen’. Apple was awarded $399 million in damages – Samsung’s entire profit from the sale of its infringing smartphones. Under Section 289 of the Patent Act, a person who manufactures or sells ‘any article of manufacture to which [a patented] design or colorable imitation has been applied shall be liable to the owner to the extent of his total profit’ (35 U.S.C. §289).