This decision revolves around a particular statutory section for providing damages in design patent cases at 35 U.S.C. § 289, which requires courts to order damages equal to the "total profit" earned from the sale of an "article of manufacture" that infringes upon a design patent. The Federal Circuit found an "article of manufacture" to mean the entire product sold to consumers, since a consumer could not buy particular iPhone design features, such as its arrangement of rounded icons on the home screen. The Supreme Court disagreed, and held that the law allows defendants to argue that damages are restricted only to the component(s) of finished products, and they need not be the finished product sold to consumers.

The term “article of manufacture” 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 manufacture” in §289 to cover only an end product sold to a consumer gives too narrow a meaning to the phrase.

Unfortunately, due to "inadequate briefing", the Court did not provide much guidance as to how to determine what a design patent covers, or how much it might contribute to damages (i.e., a test for determining the breadth of an "article of manufacture"). Therefore, it falls back to the Federal Circuit to devise a test as to what (narrower) "article of manfuacture" is covered by a design patent in question, for further proceedings, which, given the stakes, may likely and subsequently be appealed back up to the Supreme Court for further review.

For the full opinion -- https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/16pdf/15-777_7lho.pdf