Apple is clearly on a winning streak. After getting an injunction against Motorola Mobility, the Cupertino company has been cleared of infringing four of Samsung’s patents.
According to FossPatent, “Administrative Law Judge E. James Gildea just issued his preliminary ruling on Samsung’s ITC complaint against Apple. At this stage of the investigation, four Samsung patents, including a couple of allegedly standard-essential ones, are at issue. Samsung had dropped one of its five patents-in-suit, a kind of streamlining that is expected in ITC investigations and also performed by Apple in its own offensive cases.”
The four patents are:
- claims 75-76 and 82-84 of U.S. Patent No. 7,706,348 on an “apparatus and method for encoding/decoding transport format combination indicator in CDMA mobile communication system” (an allegedly UMTS-essential patent)
- claims 9-16 of U.S. Patent No. 7,486,644 on a “method and apparatus for transmitting and receiving data with high reliability in a mobile communication system supporting packet data transmission” (allegedly UMTS-essential)
- claims 5, 9-10 and 13 of U.S. Patent No. 6,771,980 on a “method for dialing in a smart phone”
- claims 1-5 of U.S. Patent No. 7,450,114 on “user interface systems and methods for manipulating and viewing digital documents”
This case is now refer to the the six-member ITC Commission for review. The final decision is due in four months. According to Mueller, “Samsung was hoping (and despite today’s setback will continue to hope) to gain some leverage over Apple from an ITC import ban. And in light of the recent California trial, Samsung needs leverage sooner rather than later.”
Source: FossPatent
Image: TechXilla
