US court bans sales of Samsung devices that aren't on sale anymore

We've got a new episode in the seemingly neverending Apple v. Samsung patent spat. This time around there isn't a big sum of money that Samsung has to pay Apple or anything like that.

US District Judge Lucy Koh has granted Apple a motion for permanent injunction against Samsung devices found to have patent-infringing technology. Translated from legalese, that essentially means that Samsung is now banned from selling these handsets in the US.

That sounds very bad, until you look at the list in question and realize that none of these smartphones have actually been on sale anywhere for quite a while, since they're all very old. We're talking about the Admire, Galaxy Nexus, Galaxy Note, Galaxy Note 2, Galaxy S2, Galaxy S2 Epic 4G Touch, Galaxy S2 Skyrocket, Galaxy S3, and Stratosphere. The most recent device in there seems to be the Galaxy S3 from 2012.

So this ruling does favor Apple in the ongoing patent war with Samsung, but it is in the end completely pointless. The Korean company will suffer absolutely no losses from not being able to sell handsets it hasn't been selling anymore anyway. A Samsung spokesperson said that "while this will not impact American consumers, it is another example of Apple abusing the judicial system to create bad legal precedent which can harm consumer choice for generations to come". Apple representatives have remained mum on the decision.

This could be impactful in other ways, however. In the future such sales bans could be decided by judges in an easier manner than before, with this precedent having been set - especially when talking about complex devices such as smartphones, many different aspects of which can be patented.

Source | Via