It’s been a good week for Apple in their ongoing legal battle against Samsung. Following news earlier this week that President Obama vetoed a Samsung import ban on many Apple products, the U.S. International Trade Commission ruled this afternoon that Samsung is indeed guilty of violating a pair of Apple’s patents. Along with the verdict, the ITC also issued a full import and sales ban on several of Samsung’s older products.
GigaOM reports, citing news alerts from Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal:
The U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) has handed a partial victory to Apple in its patent infringement claims against Samsung, according to reports from Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal. The Journal in a breaking news alert adds that ITC has ordered ban on a few Samsung devices that infringe two Apple patents and that ITC has found no Samsung violations on four other Apple patents. The victory could put Samsung’s smartphones and tablets business in jeopardy.
FOSS Patents provides additional details, including which specific patents were involved:
Today the United States International Trade Commission (USITC, or just ITC) handed down its final ruling on Apple’s July 2011 complaint against Samsung. Over the last few months the Commission, the U.S. trade agency’s highest-level decision-making body, conducted athorough review of two preliminary rulings by Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) Thomas B. Pender, and concluded that Samsung infringes the following two Apple patents, which it failed to prove invalid and with respect to which Apple established the existence of a domestic industry:
U.S. Patent No. 7,479,949 on a “touch screen device, method, and graphical user interface for determining commands by applying heuristics” (which Apple wanted to call “the Jobs patent” in a trial in Judge Posner’s court that never took place); this patent is under reexamination pressure; Apple also made headway with other multi-touch patents earlier this week when it won a remand to the ITC of its case against Google’s Motorola Mobility
U.S. Patent No. 7,912,501 on an “audio I/O headset plug and plug detection circuitry”
The import ban is similar to the one against Apple that Obama recently vetoed – and considering that move cost Samsung a $1 billion loss, this is sure to come as some very unwelcome news to the Korean electronics giant. The import ban will be sent to President Obama for a review, and if Obama does not object to the ruling (and it’s pretty unlikely that he will), the ban will go into event within 60 days.
