Court of Appeals Sends Back Apple-Samsung Patent Case for Reconsideration

After Apple’s (News - Alert) win against Samsung in their recent infamous court case over the Galaxy Nexus smartphone, some thought the debate would be over. Those people would be wrong, however, now a U.S. appeals court has overturned the preliminary injunction that was handed down on the sale of the Galaxy Nexus.

This move is a significant blow to Apple Inc., who brought the patent case against Samsung (News - Alert) Electronics Company Ltd. back in April of 2011. The original ruling by the jury in August of this year sided with Apple, and ordered Samsung to pay the company a total of $1.05 billion in damages.

An appeal was expected, but the result of the appeal is still somewhat surprising, as many expected the verdict to come down on the side of Apple from the beginning.

The charge from Apple is that Samsung copied many of Apple’s designs from the iPad and the iPhone (News - Alert) to create their newest smartphone, the Galaxy Nexus.

Apple is currently waging an all-out war on Google on several fronts, with the Samsung case being one of them, as Google’s Android (News - Alert) software powers many of Samsung’s devices.

Today the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled that the district court in California “abused its discretion in entertaining an injunction.” This means that the case has now been sent back to a lower California court for reconsideration, which could significantly change the final verdict in the case, including the staggering amount of money Samsung was ordered to pay Apple.

The Nexus is set to be replaced with a whole host of new tablets and smartphones which will reportedly be launched before the holidays, but the case still has major significance for smartphone makers everywhere.

This overturning the pre-trial ban of the Apple case is in all respects a slap right in the face for Apple, as its patents in the Nexus case are directly related to features of the Android, its main competitor.

The patents Apple charges Samsung with copying are specifically related to the software-enabled features such as the “click-to-zoom,” so the ultimate ruling in this case is important to the many smartphones which are powered by Android.

On Wednesday, Google (News - Alert) executive chairman Eric Schmidt described the competition with Apple as a “defining fight,” for the mobile industry, with no signs of slowing down in the future.

He added the reason he believes the court case has received so much coverage thus far, saying “We’ve not seen...competitive fights on this scale.”