Apple should have been awarded injunction against Samsung, court says

Apple should have been awarded an injunction against Samsung in their long-running smartphone patent war, the US court of appeals ruled on Thursday.

The court of appeals for the federal circuit in Washington DC said the lower court, led by US district judge Lucy Koh, abused its discretion by denying Apple an injunction against Samsung after a jury ordered the Korean company to pay $120m in May last year for infringing three of Apple’s patents.

Slide to unlock

The case involved patents covering slide-to-unlock, autocorrect and data detection features.

The appeals court ruling said that Apple’s proposed injunction is narrow because it does not want to ban Samsung’s devices from the marketplace, and that Samsung can remove the patented features without recalling its products.

The case was sent back to a federal district court in San Jose, California, to reconsider the injunction.

Little impact

After the jury verdict last year, Koh refused Apple’s request for a permanent injunction to stop Samsung from selling the infringing features on its smartphones.

Calling Apple’s injunction request “unfounded”, a spokeswoman said Samsung will ask the full slate of federal circuit judges to review the latest decision.

Apple reiterated its previous comments about the case, saying: “Samsung wilfully stole our ideas and copied our products.”

Michael Risch, a professor of law at Villanova University School of Law, said the impact on Samsung of the latest decision could be limited because the company has been bracing for a possible injunction, designing around the features or abandoned them already.

In the Apple-Samsung patent wars, “Apple has won every round,” he said. “But the reality is it hasn’t actually slowed Samsung down.”

The two companies are embroiled in a separate case stemming from 2012, which saw Apple initially awarded $930m for Samsung infringing patents and design features, which was reduced by $382m in May this year. The final amount of damages is still in dispute within Koh’s court.