Samsung won't get a last-minute reprieve from Obama like Apple did.
by Joe Mullin
by Joe Mullin
Samsung will be barred from importing some of its older phones thanks to a limited exclusion order that Apple won at the International Trade Commission. The exclusion order came out two months ago and kicks in today. The Korean company's last hope was a veto of the order by President Barack Obama, who recently issued a similar veto to protect Apple from an exclusion order.
The news is part of a broad array of patent battles that continue between Apple and Samsung. In this case at the ITC, Samsung products were found to infringe two Apple patents, one related to multitouch technology and another on headphone-jack sensors.
In allowing the exclusion order to go forward, US Trade Representative Michael Froman noted that Samsung's newer-model phones had worked around the patents at issue, meaning that the effect of an import ban will be sharply limited.
"The order expressly states that these devices and any other Samsung electronic media devices incorporating the approved design-around technologies are not covered," Froman said in a statement provided to Bloomberg News. "Thus, I do not believe that concerns with regard to enforcement related to the scope of the order, in this case, provide a policy basis for disapproving it."
There are big differences between the two dueling ITC cases—in particular, Samsung was attacking Apple with standard-essential patents, whereas Apple was using patents on specific non-standard-based features. Despite that, the fact that the Obama administration was willing to intervene in the Apple-Samsung battles in favor of the US company may smack of favoritism to some.
The exclusion order shows that two of the older Samsung phones affected in this case are the Transform SPH-M920 and the Continuum SCH-1400. The Galaxy S II and Galaxy Tab 7.0 were also in the case but were found not to infringe the headphone patent. The effect on Samsung's bottom line of excluding those two phones will be de minimis. But Apple has proven it can and will go to great lengths to force its competitors to eliminate popular features from their phones.
Even though only a few phones were affected, Samsung argued vociferously against an import ban. It said that ITC exclusions are overly broad and threaten legitimate trade.
Despite the earlier information available about the Transform and Continuum, it isn't clear from the information available this morning exactly what Samsung phones will be banned and which ones have acceptable design-arounds. The ITC website is closed down due to the US government shutdown, and no documents or case information can be retrieved from it. The US Trade Representative's website is operating but has not been updated since October 1.
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