The copyright infringement saga of Apple vs. Samsung is long, ever shifting, and mostly technical. But things just got more interesting in that never-ending game of lawsuits as big players like Google, Facebook, HP, Dell, eBay, and others have just entered the fray -- and are supporting Samsung.

The group of big Silicon Valley firms submitted a brief in early July to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit supporting Samsung's request that the damages Apple won in its patent infringement lawsuit in 2012 be severely reduced or dropped entirely. Originally spotted by Inside Sources, the "friends of the court" briefing filed by Google et al. argues upholding the ruling would set a precedent that could lead to "absurd results" and a "devastating impact" on the industry.

Samsung was originally ordered to pay nearly $1 billion in damages after a jury in 2012 found Samsung guilty of infringing on a few Apple iPhone patents in some of their devices. That amount was already reduced once (by about a third) after a successful appeal, but Samsung has appealed again -- now with the help of much of the industry.

According to the briefing, the Silicon Valley companies are worried, to put it in the simplest terms, that the punishment doesn't fit the crime.

Samsung argued the same in its appeals of the decision, which found Samsung had infringed on six of Apple's design patents for the iPhone, but awarded Apple a settlement based on the full value or "total profit" of the offending devices sold by its rival.

In the briefing, the companies backing Samsung explained why that could have devastating results across the industry:

"Under the panel's reasoning, the manufacturer of a smart television containing a component that infringed any single design patent could be required to pay in damages its total profit on the entire television, no matter how insignificant the design of the infringing feature was to the manufacturer's profit or to consumer demand."

Wondering why Facebook or eBay feel they have a stake in the decision over smartphone hardware patents? The group's briefing went on to argue that a precedent by the court could adversely affect software and web platforms as well:

"Software products and online platforms face similar dangers. A design patent may cover the appearance of a single feature of a graphical user interface, such as the shape of an icon," wrote the industry group in its briefing.  

"That feature -- a result of a few lines out of millions of code -- may appear only during a particular use of the product, on one screen display among hundreds. But the panel's decision could allow the owner of the design patent to receive all profits generated by the product or platform, even if the infringing element was largely insignificant to the user and it was the thousands of other features, implemented across the remainder of the software, that drove the demand generating those profits."

The result, reads the amicus briefing, "would have a devastating impact on companies, including [the writers of the briefing], who spend billions of dollars annually on research and development for complex technologies and their components." The companies are referring to Samsung's appeal saying that the decision could lead to "an explosion of design patent assertions and lawsuits."

After Google et al. filed the briefing, Apple responded saying the filing should not be treated as an impartial amicus briefing and should be dismissed, especially since Google has vested interests in a direct rival to Apple (namely, Android).