Apple and Samsung trade blows over patents
Apple and Samsung both scored victories in the space of a week in the complex patent war they are fighting across four continents.
On June 26, 2012, a judge in California issued a rare preliminary injunction against Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet in the US, saying it probably infringed a design patent covering Apple’s iPad.
In a separate case three days later, the same judge, Lucy Koh, granted an injunction against Samsung’s Galaxy Nexus for infringing a search patent owned by Apple. But an appeals court overturned that ban only two days later, allowing Samsung to continue selling the smartphone in the US.
A Samsung spokesman expressed the company’s disappointment with the first decision, saying Apple was claiming rights over a “generic design patent”. Apple was unavailable for comment when contacted by WIPR.
Apple’s claims that the Galaxy tablet infringes the iPad are part of a case fi led in April 2011. A US jury is set to decide in a trial beginning on July 30, 2012 whether the tablet, among other Samsung products, infringes technical and design patents held by Apple.
In this dispute, Koh ruled in December 2011 that the devices were “virtually indistinguishable” and that the Galaxy probably infringed Apple’s IP. But she could not issue an injunction because the design patent may have been later invalidated if Samsung used prior art defences.
However at the US District Court for the Northern District of California on June 26, she sided with Apple following an appeal court’s ruling. Th e iPad producer was ordered to pay a bond of $2.6 million. Samsung immediately lodged an appeal, which Koh later rejected.
Florian Mueller, a patent consultant based in Germany, said it is difficult to win a preliminary injunction in the US. He said the harm to the alleged infringer “must be clear” while analysing the allegation must take place under “severe constraints” such as testimony and evidence becoming available late in the process.
He added that, in procedural terms, moving for a preliminary injunction is always “somewhat ambitious and aggressive”. “But given how slow patent litigation in the United States is, it’s not surprising that Apple looks for shortcuts to enforceable decisions,” he said.
Three days later Koh presided over another case, which was filed by Apple in February 2012. Apple claimed Samsung’s Nexus smartphone used tools that copied the way that its software, ‘Siri’, searches the Internet and mobile devices.
Koh banned sales of the Nexus before the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit overturned the injunction on July 1, 2012. Apple, which was forced to pay a $95 million bond, had until July 12 to respond.
The companies are fighting a patent war spanning about 10 countries including Australia and Germany. Apple has suffered some setbacks recently—in June, a Dutch judge forced it to pay Samsung damages for infringing patents relating to connecting phones and tablets to the Internet.
And in July, a judge at the UK’s High Court rejected Apple’s claims that the Galaxy Tab infringed the iPad. Pointing to differences in the design, Judge Colin Birss said Samsung’s products were “not as cool” as Apple’s.
One lawyer told WIPR that “the big question was at what point the parties sit down and come to a commercial resolution to close all of this litigation”.
