Apple’s team of well-paid lawyers really showed Samsung’s team of highly-paid lawyers who’s boss, thanks to a recent court order banning the sale of Samsung’s leading flagship phones from 2012.
The order, handed down by Judge Lucy Koh of the Northern California District San Jose court, is the end result of a long-running patent dispute. Apple claimed that Samsung was in violation of a handful of patents (relating to unlock gestures and word recommendations); Samsung disagreed, and the two giant legal teams slugged it out in court until the judge finally agreed with Apple.
Thanks to the ruling, the following Samsung devices are now banned from sale in the US:
Samsung Admire
Galaxy Nexus
Galaxy Note
Galaxy Note II
Galaxy S II
Galaxy S II Epic 4G Touch
Galaxy S II Skyrocket
Galaxy S III
Samsung Stratosphere
In many different ways, the case embodies the failings in the US’s current patent system. The original patents were pretty damn vague to begin with (“a system and method causes a computer to detect and perform actions on structures identified in computer data”), and even if the patents were particularly valid, the legal system didn’t do a good job of enforcing them: It took three years to block sales of Samsung’s devices, by which time there’ve been three entirely new generations of smartphones.
