Supreme Court may reel in Apple v. Samsung damage award

The major issue in this case that brings it to the Supreme Court gets to a thread of sentiment I've noticed occasionally here on HN and elsewhere: what do/should design patents cover for technology products? In legal parlance, what is the "article of manufacture", perhaps summed up in this quote from the article:

"The damages statute for design patents was written to protect products like rugs, where the design was essentially the entire thing being sold," said Matt Levy, patent counsel for the Computer and Communications Industry Association, in an e-mailed statement. "A smartphone is much more than just the outer casing. The logic just doesn't work—and neither does the math. We think the lower court misinterpreted the law."