Appeals Court Sides with Apple in Samsung Patent Dispute

The row between the world-leading smartphone manufacturers stems from the slide-to-unlock feature, quicklinks and autocorrect. But an appeals court ruled that Apple could not patent the basic design of the iPhone, putting some of that award in jeopardy.

But the ruling comes long after Samsung has changed the way those features work on its smartphones.

Don’t expect this – or anytime soon – to be the end of the story, however.

Apple appealed, saying the district court got it wrong when it failed to recognize that Apple would lose market share and sales from Samsung’s infringement. Unfortunately for Apple, this does not mean the company was actually awarded an injunction today.

Google, HTC, LG and Rackspace Hosting were among the companies backing Samsung in its arguments.

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. Samsung countersued, and the case went to trial in August 2012. 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.

Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. have been locked in a bitter feud for years over the patents covering a variety of features commonly used in many smartphones.

The ruling, however, will make it more difficult for Xiaomi, Huawei and ZTE, among others, to replicate certain features found on Apple’s iPhones.

Apple had been previously granted $119 million for Samsung’s infringement of the same patents, but the request for injunction had been denied because the court claimed that “Apple had not shown that it would suffer irreparable harm without an injunction” and thus “Apple could not establish that monetary damages were inadequate”. Judge Koh, in a pretrial judgement, had already ruled that Samsung infringed the ‘172 “automatic word correction” patent, and the jury simply calculated damages.

It’s just one of several patent cases currently being fought in courts between the two smartphone giants. Those devices named by Apple included the Admire, Galaxy Nexus, Galaxy Note, Galaxy Note 2, Galaxy S2, Galaxy S2 Epic 4G Touch, Galaxy S2 Skyrocket, Galaxy S3, and Stratosphere.

Apple did not respond to a request seeking comment.