Court bans Samsung from selling old smartphones

The smartphones covered under the order include Samsung’s Galaxy Nexus, Galaxy Note, Galaxy Note2, Galaxy S2, Galaxy S2 Skyrocket, Galaxy S3 and Stratosphere products. Now, the tech giants have been joined by legal experts and nonprofit organizations in supporting Samsung and are urging the US Supreme Court to reconsider the lower-court’s decision. It has claimed that Apple has been allowed to abuse the judicial system and the whole case will limit the freedom in consumer choices for years to come.

In Dec 2014, a United States District Court in California imposed a penalty of $548 million on Samsung for “copying” Apple’s iPhone technology. However, this is effectively useless though it’s a small victory for Apple as they continue to fight Samsung in court.

The court orders could have far-reaching consequences for many smartphone manufacturers apart from Apple and Samsung, as their devices incorporate a wide variety of complex features and technologies that hold individual patents.

An injunction, preferably alongside a huge damages claim, is probably everything Apple ever wanted out of this case, as the injunction effectively bars Samsung from developing, selling, importing or advertising software that infringes on Apple’s patents.

“The latest move will only have a minimal impact on Samsung’s mobile business because most of the models to be banned are too old, while it gave Apple more negotiating power when it comes to patents”, he says.

Samsung has several phones, including the Galaxy S II and S III, that were found to infringe a “data detection/linking feature”, or the “quick links” patent. Apple was fighting for an injunction ruling to be put into effect immediately instead of the usual 30-day deadline, but Judge Koh rejected the request. That means that Samsung needn’t worry about this patent.

Samsung said: “To protect the future of innovation, design patent laws must be interpreted in a way that makes sense for modern products”.

Finally, the autocorrect patent is the one place where Samsung will likely try a design-around. “Patent assertion entities are already using the appeals court’s decision to threaten operating companies with the total loss of their profits”. In old times, patent law was considered very seriously and there used to be single patent for a particular product.