Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., has received the unlikely backing of a host of Silicon Valley tech firms as its long-running patent dispute with Apple rumbles on. The unlikely coalition, which includes Google, eBay Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co., Dell Inc., and Facebook, has filed what’s known as a “friend of the court” brief in support of Samsung’s position.

A little background to understand what’s happening. Samsung’s case dates back to a lawsuit filed against it by Apple back in 2011. The Cupertino-based iPhone maker alleged that Samsung had infringed a number of its patents when building some of its early smartphone models, and the U.S. courts agreed, ordering Samsung to pay Apple some $930 million in damages. Naturally, Samsung wasn’t too pleased with that result and immediately filed an appeal, which later resulted in a panel of three judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit cancelling $382 million of the damages that were awared in relation to trade dress dilution.

That still meant Samsung was facing a $548 million in fines for its design and utility patent infringements, but the Korean firm quickly asked for a full bench review of part of the court’s ruling relating to $399 million of the damages. That amounts to its entire profits from products that were found to infringe three Apple design patents, but Samsung says that the damages should be limited to its profits from the infringing features only.

Now, Samsung’s Silicon Valley friends have stepped in to help its cause. The friend of the court brief, first obtained by InsideSources, argues that the industry would be “opened up to mass patent infringement lawsuits” if Apple wins the case.

As such, the brief asks the U.S. Federal Circuit Court of Appeals court to review its earlier decision to force Samsung to hand over the profits from the handful of Apple patent infringements it was convicted of. The companies reason that if the ruling is upheld, it could stifle innovation and limit consumer choice.

“If allowed to stand, that decision will lead to absurd results and have a devastating impact on companies, including [the briefing draftees], who spend billions of dollars annually on research and development for complex technologies and their components,” the tech firms wrote in their brief, according to InsideSources.

For example, it could lead to patent owners demanding all of the profits from any infringing product, even if consumers bought that product primarily for its other features don’t really care about the infringing element.

As for Apple, it continues to argue that it deserves all of the profits from the infringing devices. It claims that Samsung saw its share of the smartphone market jump from five percent to 20 percent after copying its design, earning the company billions of dollars in profits and revenue.

The case remains the last big legal tussle between Apple and Samsung, after the two companies agreed to drop all non-U.S. patent lawsuits in August 2014.

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