Will the battle between Apple and Samsung never come to an end? To be honest, it’s getting extremely exhausting.
According to Reuters, a judge with the International Trade Commission ruled that the South Korean company infringed upon a portion of one of Apple’s patents by mimicking the Cupertino conglomerate’s method of text selection. However, the judge also rejected another part of Apple’s claim, which stated that the technology some Samsung devices use to detect whether or not something was plugged into the headphone jack was also an infringement.
Although the decision was made back on March 26, the ruling was kept confidential until both companies had time to remove any sensitive company information from the records, before releasing them to the public.
But of course, it’s not over yet. Sure, the judge made a ruling, but now the ITC as a whole must decide if it agrees with it, or if it will be overturned. We’ll have to wait until August (sigh) before we know how it turns out. If the commission does decide to uphold the judge’s decision, we could see a freeze put on the exporting of the offending devices into the United States. This means, until/if they’re updated, we could have to say goodbye to the Galaxy, Transform, and Nexus.
This does not bode well for Samsung sales, given the increasing popularity of the Galaxy devices, in particular. Apple is currently the second biggest phone manufacturer on the planet, trailing behind Samsung. If this decision is upheld, in the least, this could help tighten the gap.
It seems like this is a battle that has been going on forever, and feels like there is no end in sight. But it would be nice if, for once, our favorite mobile innovators were duking it out in the market instead of the courtroom.
