The battle continues in the court system as to whether Samsung's devices infringe on the patents held by Apple. The Court of Appeals has now reversed the original order to ban Samsung's devices in the United States, according to MacRumors.
The original order banned sales of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus and Galaxy Tab 10.1 as part of a preliminary injunction granted to Apple. The appeals court, in the beginning of their court order, noted the following:
Because the district court abused its discretion in entering an injunction, we reverse and remand.
The appeals court takes issue with the patent used for the basis of the injunction as well. The patent, as laid out here, specifically states "universal interface for retrieval of information in a computer system." Apple said that its patent is used to perform unified search via Siri, the voice assistant for iOS. The infringing unified search feature was patched by Samsung with a workaround soon after the ban via an over-the-air (OTA) update. That workaround is now no longer necessary, and the court has also said the following in its court order:
...it may very well be that the accused product would sell almost as well without incorporating the patented feature. And in that case, even if the competitive injury that results from selling the accused device is substantial, the harm that flows from the alleged infringement (the only harm that should count) is not.
Essentially, the court has said that there is no harm to Apple, even if the infringing feature is included in Samsung's devices. The Samsung Galaxy Nexus devices never sold enough to be a threat to Apple's bottom line.
For those who are interested, the full court order can be obtained here.
Source: Macrumors
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