“Samsung Electronics scored a partial victory against arch-foe Apple Inc on Friday after a U.S. appeals court lifted a freeze on sales of its Galaxy Nexus smartphones but upheld a lower court’s decision to temporarily halt sales of its Galaxy 10.1 tablet computer,” Diane Bartz reports for Reuters.
“Apple accused its Asian rival, the leader in global mobile device sales, in lawsuits of blatantly copying its hot-selling iPhones and iPads,” Bartz reports. “Last week, a San Jose court granted rare, temporary injunctions against the sale of the Galaxy mobile devices in question, a triumph for the Silicon Valley consumer electronics giant that had asked for the bans until their trial begins July 30.”
Bartz reports, “The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said it would temporarily stay the smartphone injunction while it considers Apple’s arguments, the court said in a brief order. It gave Apple a July 12 deadline to respond.”
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Florian Mueller reports for FOSS Patents, “The court will await Apple’s response and then decide on a stay for the entire duration of the appeal. In other words, we might see an “on again, off again” ban: it was in effect after Judge Koh denied Samsung’s motion to stay and Apple posted the bond; it’s now stayed; but if the Federal Circuit does not decide to stay it for the entire duration of the appeal, then it will enter into force again, possibly as early as next week.”
“The temporary stay allows Samsung to minimize the disruption that the injunction causes. Google had announced a software change to avoid further infringement, but it will likely take time to build new devices that come with non-infringing operating software,” Mueller reports. “It would be mistaken to conclude from this temporary stay that Samsung is very likely to win a stay for the duration of the apeal. But there’s no question that its motion to stay the Nexus injunction is clearly more likely to succeed than the one relating to the Galaxy Tab 10.1.”
Mueller writes, “Samsung can now sell some more of the Nexus units it already has in its U.S. warehouse, but the temporary stay could go away within a matter of days or a very few weeks. Samsung will need to build, and ship to the U.S., some non-infringing Nexus units anyway to avoid or mimimize disruption in case this temporary stay is not extended.”
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