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Yes, Apple's Appealing The Samsung Patents Case!

This article is more than 10 years old.

Of course it wasn't going to be over just in one round. Not only do we have Apple and Samsung suing each other in half the major legal jurisdictions around the world, they're also not taking defeat in one or other case lying down. Gain a judgement they don't like and off it is to the next level of courts upwards. No doubt the lawyers enjoy this but I'm not sure anyone else does:

Apple today told a U.S. district court judge in San Jose it would appeal her decision earlier this week not to ban sales of a number of Samsung phones.

Earlier this week Judge Lucy Koh denied Apple's bid for a sales ban on 26 Samsung products, saying that any infringing features were just part of a larger feature set, making a sales ban too broad. That decision meant Samsung can continue to sell those devices, which are mainly older models, in the U.S.

That isn't the only point that has been made about the ban on sales though. The courts view a sales ban as being quite a serious step to take. There has to be a really compelling reason to allow one. Judge Koh has pointed out, as above, that the violated patents weren't really all that important to the decision as to whether to buy an Apple or Samsung phone. Things such as "pinch to zoom" might have changed some decisions at the margin but that's the sort of damage that can be compensated for by monetary damages. Samsung's actions haven't destroyed, only possibly harmed, Apple's business so a sales ban (ie, destroying Samsung's business) would be something of an over reaction if you like.

But there's another issue here as well. Apple has licensed many of those self same patents to HTC. Meaning that these patents aren't regarded by Apple as so essential that no one else can ever use them. They're patents which at least some people can use with the payment of the appropriate amounts of cash.

Thus, at least at this stage, it seems logical that Samsung can compensate Apple purely with cash: a sales ban is not warranted as being the only possible compensation.

Whether Apple can argue through all of that at the higher stages of the legal system is an unknown: but it does seem slightly unlikely that they can.