A U.S. appeals court on Thursday rejected Apple Inc’s request to revive its bid for a sales ban on Samsung’s Galaxy Nexus smartphone, dashing the iPhone maker’s attempt to recover crucial leverage in the global patent wars.<\/p>\n
Apple had asked the full Federal Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., to revisit a decision in October by a three-judge panel of the same court. The panel rejected Apple’s request to impose a sales ban on Samsung’s Nexus smartphone ahead of a trial set for March 2014.<\/p>\n
An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment. A Samsung representative could not immediately be reached.<\/p>\n
The fight in appeals court comes after Apple won a $1.05 billion verdict last year against Samsung in a U.S. District Court in California. The same trial judge will preside over the legal battle surrounding the Nexus phone, which involves a patent not included in the earlier trial.<\/p>\n
The fight has been widely viewed as a proxy war between Apple and Google Inc. Samsung’s hot-selling Galaxy smartphones and tablets run on Google’s Android operating system, which Apple’s late co-founder, Steve Jobs, once denounced as a “stolen product.”<\/p>\n
In its October ruling against Apple, the appeals court raised the bar for potentially market-crippling injunctions on product sales based on narrow patents for phone features. The legal precedent puts Samsung in a much stronger position by allowing its products to remain on store shelves while it fights a global patent battle against Apple over smartphone technology.<\/p>\n
U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh, in San Jose, California, who has presided over much of the Apple\/Samsung litigation in the United States, cited the appeals’ court decision in a December order rejecting Apple’s request for permanent sales bans on several Samsung phones. Apple has appealed Koh’s ruling.<\/p>\n
Apple wanted the full Federal Circuit of Appeals, made up of nine active judges, to reverse the earlier ruling. But in a brief order on Thursday, the court rejected Apple’s request without detailed explanation or any published dissents.<\/p>\n
Several experts had believed that Apple faced long odds, as the legal issues in play were not considered controversial enough to spur full court review.<\/p>\n
Apple could still appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. However, the high court has made it more difficult for patent plaintiffs to secure sales injunctions in recent years.<\/p>\n
The case in the Federal Circuit is Apple Inc. vs Samsung Electronics Co Ltd et al, 12-1507.<\/p>\n
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