Apple request to halt U.S. sales of Samsung Galaxy products denied

U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose refused to grant Apple's request to stop U.S. sales of Samsung Galaxyproducts. Specifically, the Cupertino based company was asking for a halt on sales of the Samsung Droid Charge, Samsung Galaxy S 4G, Samsung Infuse 4G and the Samsung GALAXY Tab 10.1 tablet. The latter has been banned from sales in Germany and in Australia although that might be changing. A court in Australia reversed the ban, which has been extended until December 9th to determine if Apple can appeal the reversal. In Germany, Samsung redesigned the tablet to make it appear less similar to the Apple iPad. The Samsung GALAXY Tab 10.1N is the name of the redesigned device in Germany, which Apple is also trying to have banned.

In her ruling, Judge Koh said that it was not clear that Apple would not be harmed even if she awarded the preliminary injunction against Samsung and the four products named in the suit. The Judge added that the case is not over and as she previously noted, Apple will probably be able to prove that Samsung infringed on at least one Apple patent with the Korean manufacturer's tablet. She did add that Apple still needs to prove the validity of the patent, which it has yet to do.

An Apple spokeswoman, Kristin Huguet, reiterated that Samsung's "blatant copying is wrong" while Samsung issued no comment after the ruling. The legal battle between the two tech titans is now situated in 10 countries, spanning 20 separate cases. The whole legal battle started in April when Apple sued Samsung claiming that the Galaxy line of mobile devices copied the look and feel of the Apple iPhone and Apple iPad.

source: Reuters via AppleInsider