There continues to be a flurry of activity and motions and such around the Apple/Samsung patent fight, and we’re avoiding most of the play-by-play until something “big” happens. But today there was an interesting ruling from the appeals court, concerning the original injunction that Judge Lucy Koh issued, blocking Samsung from selling the Galaxy Tab 10.1 device (which is already a bit obsolete anyway). She had issued that injunction earlier in the case, before the jury ruled, and that actually has presented something of a problem. Among the patents that the jury said Samsung did not infringe was the one that Koh relied on to issue her injunction. Given that, the appeals court has sent the injunction back to Koh to reconsider. Of course, all this really reinforces is the ridiculousness of the patent system today: a judge can assume that an entire product line can be blocked because it’s infringing on a particular patent… only to have a jury (which in this case clearly mostly sided with Apple anyway) decide that the patent didn’t apply. When a system comes up with such arbitrary results, it’s a sign that the system itself is broken.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story