Federal Circuit Grants Samsung Temporary Galaxy Nexus Reprieve

The United States Court of Appeal for the Federal Circuit has granted Samsung a temporary stay of Apple’s preliminary injunction against the sales of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus in the country.

Apple now has until 12 July to respond to the motion, after which the Federal Circuit will decide whether or not to extend the stay for the duration of the appeal. The iPhone manufacturer is likely to respond much sooner and if the Federal Circuit decides not to extend the stay, the ban could be reinforced.

However, it was not all good news for Samsung, after the court rejected its bid to be granted a stay on a separate injunction banning sales of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, possibly because the device has been superseded by the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2. The court did not explain its reasoning.

Apple appeal likely

Samsung failed in attempts to have the injunction lifted on both devices prior to the Federal Circuit’s decisions last week, although the Galaxy Nexus case is viewed as the more important one.  Apple was granted a preliminary injunction against the sale of the smartphone after it was able to prove that “irreparable” damages were caused by the infringement of a patent related to Siri.

“The temporary stay allows Samsung to minimise the disruption that the injunction causes,” commented analyst Florian Mueller. “Google had announced a software change to avoid further infringement, but it will likely take time to build new devices that come with non-infringing operating software.”

Again, the Federal Circuit did not explain its reasoning, but Mueller suggested Samsung must have been able to convince the court that there could be serious harm from an injunction, something that was not true of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 case, and that it appears to have deemed at least one of its arguments to be reasonable.

“It would be mistaken to conclude from this temporary stay that Samsung is very likely to win a stay for the duration of the appeal,” he said. “But there’s no question that its motion to stay the Nexus injunction is clearly more likely to succeed than the one relating to the Galaxy Tab 10.1.”

Apple’s response is likely to point to the fact that Google has already announced a software patch to remove the alleged infringement to prove that there are no ‘balance-of-hardship’ reasons to stay the injunction. If the injunction is reinforced, Samsung will have to build and ship non-infringing devices to avoid or minimise disruption.

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