Appeals Court Rules Apple Was Entitled to Sales Ban on Samsung Products in Earlier Trial

applevsamsungA U.S. federal appeals court has ruled that Apple was entitled to an injunction on multiple Samsung products that a lower court ruled to be infringing on the iPhone maker's patented technologies in an early 2014 trial.

As noted by Bloomberg, the ruling sets an important precedent, since it could have an impact on how damages are awarded in future trials involving patented inventions from large technology companies such as Apple, Samsung and Google.

The decision could have far-reaching consequences in how disputes are resolved when it comes to complex devices. The ability to block use of an invention is a powerful tool that increases the price tag when negotiating settlements.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington echoed that in its ruling:

“The right to exclude competitors from using one’s property rights is important,” the Federal Circuit ruled in a 2-1 decision. “And the right to maintain exclusivity -- a hallmark and crucial guarantee of patent rights deriving from the Constitution itself -— is likewise important.”

In May 2014, a jury in the lower court Apple vs. Samsung trial found that Samsung willfully infringed on three of the five patents involved in the lawsuit, related to technologies including slide to unlock and data syncing. Samsung was ordered to pay Apple a settlement of $119.6 million.

Samsung informed the appeals court in March that only one of its products currently for sale infringes upon a single Apple patent, so any potential injunction would not have much of an impact on the South Korean company's bottom line. Nevertheless, Samsung is in the process of appealing the lower court decision before the U.S. Federal Circuit.

Tags: Apple, Samsung

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Top Rated Comments

Jason83 Avatar
126 months ago
Too little too late once again. The fines and settlements are small prices to pay in exchange for the profit Samsung initially make off the theft. They release a new product every few months that requires a new injunction that may not be upheld, so by the time the settlement comes down, the infringing product is already irrelevant!
Score: 22 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Gasu E. Avatar
126 months ago
Agreed. Would rather see apple and samsung get back to producing products instead of wasting EVERYBODYS time with this piddly ass crap. Everyones tired of it.


Is your time being wasted?
Score: 13 Votes (Like | Disagree)
usarioclave Avatar
126 months ago
Since it has become possible to patent such obvious things as rubber banding, sliding to whatever and clicking all of one time to blah blah foo, Let's just FRAND all of this so everything out there can work in a reasonable consistent way.
If you were paying attention to UI and the industry, you'd know that most of the stuff that Apple did was not obvious nor easy to do. It's obvious today because they did it really well and everyone copied them. Nobody did 30fps on a mobile device. Nobody had a "real" browser. And nobody had a UI worth anything.

Example: making folders. Did you know that nobody could make folders on mobile devices easily? People came up with lots and lots of ideas on how to make folders once touchscreens came out. Most of them involved a menu of some sort, and most of them sucked. Apple's solution was, and still is, the best and most elegant. It took Apple 3 iOS releases to come up with a way to do it.

"Obvious" isn't really obvious at all. If it was so obvious why hasn't anyone else in human history come up with a way to do it? Why didn't Android/google? Why didn't Nokia? Why didn't Moto?

Answer: because it wasn't obvious at all.

Who did rubber banding at 30fps? Answer: nobody, because no phone could do 30fps before the iPhone. In fact, no phone could even think about doing it, because they didn't have the iPhone's interaction model.

But you know, people don't want to know this stuff. "Patents are bad." "Apple is greedy." "Apple just copies stuff."

This is why industry should almost never listen to the public...or they should only listen to the money. What people say is irrelevant and mostly wrong. What people do is much, much more significant.
Score: 9 Votes (Like | Disagree)
bladerunner2000 Avatar
126 months ago
Make it end already.
Agreed. Would rather see apple and samsung get back to producing products instead of wasting EVERYBODYS time with this piddly ass crap. Everyones tired of it.
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
LordVic Avatar
126 months ago
I'm just curious;

one of the patents they listed was the Slide to unlock. wasn't that recently invalidated? Edit: Just checked, it was German court that invalidated their slide to unlock patent, Nothing to do with US that I can find

Also: how does Apple have a patent on "word completion' recommendations that was awarded in 2011, when this technology has existed in various forms prior to that?

The 3rd patent is a little more complex. But the fundamentals are "if you click something in one program it'll launch the other program with that info already, like clicking a phone number in mail to open the dialer".

again, very interesting patent. Does the patent cover the action or the method to cmplete such action? For example, I had been writing programs for work that did similar action as this. Click a weblink in a browser program that would launch Word or excel for example already filled in.

There's more here than simple patents. there's clearly a fundamental problem with how patents are awarded, what they're awarded for, AND how they're enforced.

NONE OF THIS MAKES SENSE FOR EITHER PARTY!?!? i swear, it almost seems like lawyers are just running this show so that they can keep making money off everyone.
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)
c1phers Avatar
126 months ago
Make it end already.
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)