Federal Circuit rejects Samsung’s appeal in Apple case

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has rejected an appeal from Samsung that alleged Apple infringed one of its patents covering an encoding method.

The products alleged to infringe were the iPhone 4 and iPad 3G, while recent Apple products such as the iPhone 5 were not alleged to infringe the patent.

In June 2013, the US International Trade Commission (ITC) found in favour of Samsung agreeing that Apple had infringed patent ‘348. The ITC then ordered that Apple products that infringed patent ‘348 were banned from entering the US.

The decision was later reversed after an intervention from the Obama administration, and the ban on imports of Apple products such as the iPhone 4 and the iPad 3G was lifted.

The administration had argued that Samsung’s patent ‘348 was standard to the industry and the company is obligated to license it on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms.

Furthermore, the administration said that Samsung had made a voluntary commitment to offer to license the patent on FRAND terms.

The ruling comes after a failed attempt at mediation between both companies in February 2014.

The long running battle between both companies has been fought in courts across the globe and has been covered extensively by WIPR.

Earlier this month Samsung was ordered to pay Apple $119 million for infringing patents including the ‘slide to unlock’ feature and an apparatus for adding menus to phone numbers.