S. federal court of appeals may force Samsung to change certain aspects of its tablets and smartphones that were found to have infringed on Apple patents.
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A jury back in May of past year found that Samsung was guilty of infringing on three patents held by Apple and used for its iPhones, specifically quick links, slide-to-unlock and automatic word correction.
While Apple has been able to obtain monetary judgments against its South Korean rival for patent infringement, courts on previous occasions have declined to give Apple additional leverage by barring Samsung from selling infringing features in its devices.
Still at issue is a 2012 decision in a separate case that initially awarded Apple more than $1bn in damages for Samsung’s use of its patented technologies. However, given the fact that a lot of these products aren’t even selling on the market right now, a ban wouldn’t do much good to Apple anyway.
Most of the devices named in the lawsuit are old enough that they’re no longer available, so an injunction wouldn’t have a noticeable impact on Samsung’s sales. Apple didn’t want to ban Samsung phones that included the infringing features, it just wanted Samsung to delete those features.
Although the United States court agreed that Samsung violated Apple’s patents for slide-to-unlock, autocorrect, and converting text into hyperlinks, the judge ruled against the iPhone maker’s bid to have the offending devices pulled from sale. “The public generally does not benefit when that competition comes at the expense of a patentee’s investment-backed property right”, Circuit Judge Kimberly Moore wrote.
“Apple loses sales because Samsung products contain Apple’s patented features”, the court said.
This appeal is tied to the second patent infringement case where Apple was awarded US$120 million in damages. It said it will pursue its “rights to have the full Court of Appeals review today’s decision”.
This most recent settlement, occurring in the Federal Appeals court, involved an appeal from Apple with the Cupertino company arguing err in the district courts ruling of Irreparable Harm and Inadequate Remedy of Law.
Google, HTC, LG Electronics. and Rackspace Hosting were among companies backing Samsung in its arguments.
Apple did not respond to a request seeking comment.
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The Galaxy 6 remains unaffected by Thursday’s ruling. She described Apple’s patents in question as related to “minor features”.
