Apple loses another court battle

novità-apple-2013A federal judge has rejected Apple’s attempt to block the sale of several older Samsung smartphones that copied auto-correction feature in the iPhone’s keyboard, the method to create links for email addresses and phone numbers appearing in text and the swiping gesture for unlocking the phone’s display screen.

While that particular trial, which was spun as a victory, is starting to make Apple look a little silly.  Firstly, in this case the jury awarded Apple only $119 million in damages well below the $2.2 billion in damages that Apple wanted.

And now Apple’s demand that US District Judge Lucy Koh issued an order that would have prevented future US sales of nine Samsung phone models that it claimed infringed on the iPhone technology has been rejected.

Koh said Apple had not adequately proven Samsung’s intellectual theft had hurt its sales or diminished its reputation for innovation. She noted that Apple had licensed some of the features that Samsung infringed upon to the makers of other smartphones that competed against the iPhone.

Samsung told the court the damages awarded to Apple amounted to a royalty payment for its past and future infringements on the patents at issue.

Apple had wanted to ban the US sale of these Samsung models: the Admire, Galaxy Nexus, Galaxy Note, Galaxy Note II, Galaxy S II, Galaxy S II Epic 4G Touch, Galaxy S II Skyrocket, Galaxy S III, and Stratosphere.