BBC News:

To find context ahead of Tuesday’s showdown between Apple and Samsung in the US Supreme Court, you need to go back over a century to a row over some rather attractive carpets.

It’s 1885, and John and James Dobson stand accused of nicking designs from other carpet makers and selling them off as their own.

A couple of companies, Hartford Carpet and Bigelow Carpet, were so incensed they took the Dobsons all the way to the highest court in the land.

The firms were quite right to be upset, the Supreme Court agreed, but then it got more complicated. The court hit a stumbling block over the amount of money the firms deserved in damages.

Read on for the details. Interesting.

[H/T Satyajeet Vishwakarma]