At Apple’s request US court bans the sale of some Samsung phones

A federal court in California has banned the sale of Samsung smartphones in the U.S. that have features that disobey three patents owned by Apple.
Judge Lucy Koh of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, ruled that the permanent injunction would come into effect 30 days after the entry of the order. The ban covers the implementation of features like the “slide-to-unlock” and auto word correction capabilities in some of Samsung’s earlier phones.
The specified smartphones covered under the order includes Samsung’s 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 products, which are Samsung’s older smartphones.
Earlier the court had issued a summary judgment that Samsung infringed the patent relating to the autocorrect feature. A jury then found that Samsung also infringed two other patents, including one that covered the slide-to-unlock feature, and awarded Apple damages of US$119.6 million for all infringed patents.
The Judge had earlier refused to issue a permanent injunction saying that Apple had not shown it would suffer irreparable harm without an injunction. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, however, vacated her decision and remanded it back to the lower court for further proceedings.
In another patent infringement lawsuit in the same court, Samsung has paid up conditionally $548 million, which is a part of the damages award by a jury in another case in the California court for infringement of both Apple’s utility and design patents. Samsung contested the damages after the claims of one of the patents, the ‘pinch-to-zoom’ patent that Apple has asserted, was found invalid by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board of the U.S.
Samsung is also asking the Supreme Court to review the principle for award of damages on design patents and has got support from some tech companies on this issue.