After the Obama administration vetoed a partial ban on the import and sale of some Apple products, Samsung announced that it has been granted a hearing in a US appeals court next year against the original ruling, as reported by the Financial Times. Concurrently, The Wall Street Journal reports that Samsung has lost $1 billion in market value after the weekend veto. The South Korean government has also criticized the decision, saying it had "concern over the possible negative impacts that this kind of decision could have on Samsung Electronics' patent rights".
Samsung revealed on Monday that it had filed a court appeal on July 18 against the original ITC finding, because the ITC ruled that Apple had infringed only one patent, rather than finding in favour of Samsung on all four patents it had claimed were violated.
The appeal was filed at the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, a Samsung spokesman said, adding that an oral hearing was scheduled for the first quarter of next year.
Originally, the ban of Apple products was granted back in June in response to a ruling made by the USITC (United States International Trade Commission) and applied to AT&T models of the iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS, as well as the 3G models of the iPad and iPad 2. The USITC ruled that all four products infringed on a Samsung patent, specifically Patent No. 7,706,348, titled "Apparatus and method for encoding/decoding transport format combination indicator in CDMA mobile communication system."
Apple and Samsung have been in a long, ongoing legal battle that started in 2011, with the first U.S. trial awarding $1 billion to Apple in 2012. However, a judge voided nearly half of that amount in March, and a new trial between the two companies is set for November of this year.
Top Rated Comments
You seem to think that the US government acted somehow outside the law. But what they did was actually exactly what they are supposed to do: When the USITC makes a decision, it is actually up to the government to either accept or reject the decision.
You should also note the fact that in the EU, Samsung was threatened with major (multi billion dollar) fines if they should attempt to ban iOS devices over standard essential patents, which is exactly what they managed to do in the USA. If Samsung had gone to a German or French equivalent of the ITC and not the US one, _Samsung_ would have received a major fine.
But someone else found what is likely the reason for the government rejection of the ITC decision which you can check out at here:
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2013/08/05/apple-samsung-itc-pinkert/
Dissenting opinion by one of the ITC judges involved. According to this, the ITC decision was very, very wrong in the first place.
Karma's a bitch.
And the US has protected their industries too. Steel companies, airline industry, the automotive industry(chicken tax and the bailouts), etc.
This wasn't simply the government giving Apple special treatment.
I think you mean FRANDemies.
Laws are laws; whether the patent battles are silly or not, a judge rules that a sales ban was necessary and the US government just went over their heads.