Samsung Electronics Co. infringes four Apple Inc. patents, including one for the design of the iPhone and one for touch-screen technology co-invented by Steve Jobs, a U.S. trade judge said in a decision that gives Apple another legal victory over its biggest smartphone competitor.
Two other patents, including one for the exterior shape of the iPhone, weren’t infringed, U.S. International Trade Commission Judge Thomas Pender said in a notice on the agency’s website. The judge’s findings are subject to review by the full commission, which has the power to stop goods that infringe U.S. patents at the border. The agency has twice before forced companies to alter foreign-made smartphones if they wanted to keep selling them in the U.S. HTC Corp. phones were held up at the border in May after Apple won a trade case, and the Cupertino, California- based company has an enforcement action pending that accuses HTC of violating the trade agency’s exclusion order. Google Inc.’s Motorola Mobility unit was ordered to remove a feature to coordinate schedules from its phones after they were found to infringe a Microsoft Corp. patent.
The case in today’s ruling is one of more than three dozen between the makers of about half of the world’s smartphones, who have run up hundreds of millions of dollars in legal bills. Samsung, which lost a $1 billion jury verdict in August against Apple, is challenging a different ITC judge’s findings that its own patents weren’t infringed by Apple.
