Apple has won some ground back against Samsung in a recent U.S. federal appeals court decision, Variety reports. The court ruled that a lower court decision erred in denying Apple’s request for an injunction to prevent Samsung from using certain Apple-patented features.
A Northern California federal district court had previously denied Apple’s request, indicating that Apple had failed to prove that Samsung’s infringement of Apple’s patents was the sole cause of lost sales. On Thursday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit rules that this decision was in error, and that Apple had also established that monetary damages alone were not sufficient compensation.
“The right to exclude competitors from using one’s property rights is important. And the right to maintain exclusivity — a hallmark and crucial guarantee of patent rights deriving from the Constitution itself — is likewise important,” the court said. The patented features that Apple is seeking to bar Samsung from using in its devices include slide-to-unlock, automatic links for features like calling, and text autocorrection.
