Samsung enjoys a small victory over Apple in one of their countless patent wars, with the Galaxy Nexus now available for sale again in the Google Play store.
Last week on 29th June, the San Jose federal court had approved a pre-trial injunction against the sale of Samsung’s flagship Android phone, effectively banning its sale in the US. The ban would have lasted till July 30th, when the court would have started the trial on the patent infringement claim. Apple had accused that Samsung had infringed upon the patent concerning the ‘unified search’ feature of Apple, which is used by Apple’s voice assistant Siri.
Buy the Samsung Galaxy Nexus starting at one penny.
However, Samsung filed an appeal and the U.S. appeals court on Friday overruled the previous judgement, and is deliberating on whether to scrap the ban.
Even though the Nexus is up for sale again on the Google Play store, this restoration perhaps is shaky at the best. The U.S. Appeals court also quoted apart from the document it released to lift the ban; it would reconsider re-imposing the ban after hearing Apple’s counter-argument. Apple can persuade the court to re-establish the injunction till the time the trial runs. Apple has till Thursday, July 12th to file its arguments, but there is no clear indication how long the court would sit on those arguments, according to Foss Patents.
There were no responses from Samsung officials by Saturday. Meanwhile, Google had removed the phone from the store, citing a software upgrade and assured that the Galaxy Nexus would reappear.
Google doesn’t feature in the lawsuit, but has said that it will upgrade Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich to Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. Jelly Bean, Google says doesn’t infringe any of Apple’s patents, and it would enable the sale of Galaxy Nexus. The Store now doesn’t give a specific date for the release of Jelly Bean, which implies that the comeback is due to lifting of the ban. Nonetheless, no device is to be shipped for the next three weeks, after which the Nexus might have Jelly Bean.
In the same lawsuit, Apple had requested for a temporary restriction on sales of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet. The court granted the injunction against the device, which Apple feels is visually and functionally illegitimately similar to the iPad. The U.S. Appeals court did not revoke the ban on Friday. Buy the Samsung Galaxy Nexus starting at one penny.
