Stefan Mileschin

Apple's attempts to get its rival banned from the US have failed.

After it convinced a jury that Samsung had nicked its glorious rounded rectangle, Apple had expected that Judge Lucy Koh would award it a permanent injunction against Samsung products in the US.

This is particularly since the jury ordered Samsung to write a cheque for a billion dollars.

However Koh, said no and killed off any chance that Apple has of winning the mobile patent wars.

Apple had convinced Koh to impose two pretrial sales bans against Samsung, one against the Galaxy Tab 10.1, and the other against the Galaxy Nexus phone.

After the trail it asked Koh to impose a permanent sales ban against 26 mostly older Samsung phones. The injunction could have been extended to Samsung's newer Galaxy products.

But, according to Reuters, one of the problems was that the jury cleared Samsung on the patent used to ban Galaxy Tab 10.1 sales, so Koh rescinded that injunction.

But what was more crucial was that a federal appeals court reversed Koh's ban against the Nexus phone.

Koh cited the ruling as a binding legal precedent and said that Apple had not presented enough evidence that its patented features drove consumer demand for the entire iPhone.

She pointed out that the phones contain a range of features, only a small fraction of which are covered by Apple's patents.

While Apple did have some interest in retaining certain features as exclusive to Apple, entire products can't be banned from the market because they incorporate a few narrow protected functions.

However on the plus side for Apple, Koh rejected a bid by Samsung for a new trial based on an allegation that the jury foreman was improperly biased in favour of Apple.

The ruling leaves Apple's cunning plan to patent troll its rivals from business rather than offering better products in a mess. To succeed in this plan it has to have products banned from the shelves to force Samsung either to pay ridiculous patent fees, or give up.

http://news.techeye.net/mobile/apple...ung-injunction