Apple has just won another victory against Samsung. The recent appeal to ban several Samsung products that infringinged upon Apple’s patents has been granted. Today, International Trade Commission has given their decision on finding Samsung guilty of infringing upon Apple’s patents in the case.
The Cupertino giant recently got away with not having their iPhone 4 and iPad 2 banned from being imported, however, it seem Samsung wasn’t as lucky. The patents in the case include the famous ‘Steve Jobs patent’, as well as other hardware patents inserted against Samsung.
The two patents that Apple asserted against Samsung are:
- U.S. Patent No. 7,479,949 in which the “touch screen device, method, and graphical user interface for determining commands by applying heuristics” (Steve Jobs patent)
- U.S. Patent No. 7,912,501 in which the “audio I/O headset plug and plug detection circuitry”
Florian Mueller has more scoop at FOSS Patents:
“Today the United States International Trade Commission (USITC, or just ITC) handed down its final ruling on Apple’s July 2011 complaint against Samsung. An import ban has been ordered and will take effect at the end of the 60-day Presidential review period.
Even though there may be expectations in South Korea that Samsung should benefit from a Presidential veto only because Apple just won one last Saturday, “me too” doesn’t make sense here because standard-essential patents (SEPs) like the one over which the ITC wanted to grant Samsung an exclusion order come with FRAND (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory) licensing obligations and can’t be worked around without prohibitive switching costs, while non-SEPs are traditional exclusionary rights and, most importantly, can be worked around.
In fact, Samsung presented to the ITC products that it said (and Judge Pender agreed) don’t infringe. If legality is so readily available, a veto isn’t warranted.”
The products that be banned make up for less than 1% of the company’s revenue, however, there is still quite the loss there. What do you think?
