ITC To Review Apple Samsung Patent Decision

The US International Trade Commission (ITC) has said it will review a judge’s preliminary decision that Samsung infringed four Apple patents but not two others.

Judge Thomas Pender made the preliminary ruling in October, but the ITC has said that this will now be reviewed and that Pender will be asked to take a second look at portions of two patents that Samsung was found to have infringed.

The ruling is a potentially significant one in the seemingly everlasting Apple Samsung patent war, which is currently being fought in courts in ten countries around the world.

ITC patent rows

Apple first filed the complaint in mid-2011, with seven patents originally involved and one removed during legal proceedings. Samsung was found to have infringed the four patents in its Captivate, Transform and Fascinate smartphones as well as its Galaxy Tab.

The two patents that Pender has been asked to take a second look at are believed be one that relates the use of a headset with a smartphone and another that allows a device to show an image on a screen with a second translucent image on top of it.

Apple had asked the ITC to permanently ban Samsung products that infringe its patents, but the body has not yet ruled on this issue.

Earlier this month, a Dutch court ruled that three Samsung Galaxy tablets do not copy the design of Apple’s market-leading iPad, citing a British ruling as an EU precedent.

However Samsung lost arguably the biggest lawsuit of them all last year when it was found guilty of infringing on Apple’s software and design patents, and ordered to pay £664 million in damages.

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