Ap­ple didn't vi­o­late Sam­sung's patent rights, In­ter­na­tion­al Trade Com­mis­sion (ITC) Judge James Gildea said in a no­tice post­ed on Fri­day on the agency's Web site. The judge's find­ings are sub­ject to re­view by the full com­mis­sion, which has the pow­er to block im­ports of prod­ucts that in­fringe US patents.

The judge's find­ings fol­low a fed­er­al ju­ry's rul­ing in San Jose, Cal­i­for­nia, on Au­gust 24 award­ing Ap­ple more than US$1 bil­lion in dam­ages, af­ter de­cid­ing that Sam­sung copies the look and some fea­tures of the iPhone. The Cal­i­for­nia ju­ry re­ject­ed claims that Ap­ple in­fringed oth­er Sam­sung patents.

"Ap­ple at the ITC is bul­let­proof," said Rod­ney Sweet­land, a lawyer at Du­ane Mor­ris in Wash­ing­ton, who spe­cialis­es in trade cas­es. "No­body can get any trac­tion against them there. The les­son is, if you want to get re­lief against Ap­ple, it's go­ing to have to be in a for­eign fo­rum where it doesn't have the clout or the ca­chet it has at the ITC or the north­ern dis­trict of Cal­i­for­nia."

Four patents

Gildea said there was no in­fringe­ment of any of the four patents in the ITC case, and al­so de­ter­mined that Sam­sung had not proven it had a do­mes­tic in­dus­try that used the patents, a re­quire­ment that is unique to the trade agency. The judge didn't pro­vide the rea­sons be­hind his find­ings. The opin­ion will be­come pub­lic af­ter both sides get a chance to redact con­fi­den­tial in­for­ma­tion.

"We re­main con­fi­dent that the full com­mis­sion will ul­ti­mate­ly reach a fi­nal de­ter­mi­na­tion that af­firms our po­si­tion that Ap­ple must be held ac­count­able for free-rid­ing on our tech­no­log­i­cal in­no­va­tions," Adam Yates, a Sam­sung spokesman, said. "We are proud of our long his­to­ry of in­no­va­tion in the mo­bile in­dus­try and will con­tin­ue to de­fend our in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty rights."

Kristin Huguet, a spokes­woman for Ap­ple, said the com­pa­ny had no com­ment. Ap­ple has pre­vi­ous­ly won cas­es brought against it at the trade agency by HTC Cor­po­ra­tion and Google Inc's Mo­toro­la Mo­bil­i­ty, two oth­er man­u­fac­tur­ers of phones that run on Google's An­droid op­er­at­ing sys­tem. Ap­ple lost its case against Mo­toro­la Mo­bil­i­ty, and won an or­der that forced HTC to re­move a fea­ture from its phones.

Patent bat­tles

Ap­ple, based in Cu­per­ti­no, Cal­i­for­nia, has its own ITC com­plaint pend­ing against Sam­sung, and the judge in that case is sched­uled to re­lease his find­ings Oc­to­ber 19. The two com­pa­nies, which to­geth­er make about half the smart­phones sold in the world, are em­broiled in more than 30 law­suits span­ning four con­ti­nents.

"From a cor­po­rate per­spec­tive, Sam­sung needs to get an up­per hand and they need to bring their A game," said Will Stofe­ga, pro­gram di­rec­tor at Fram­ing­ham, Mass­a­chu­setts-based re­searcher IDC. "There are a lot of things that they have go­ing for them. They are a very valid and cre­ative com­pa­ny."

Each com­pa­ny is cit­ing patent­ed in­ven­tions to claim its prod­ucts are bet­ter, while la­bel­ing its com­peti­tor as a copy­cat. They want to grab a greater share of a mar­ket that Bloomberg In­dus­tries said grew 62 per cent to US$219 bil­lion last year. Sam­sung is the world's largest mak­er of smart­phones; Ap­ple dom­i­nates in the US.

IPhone sales

The iPhone gen­er­at­ed US$16.2 bil­lion in sales for the quar­ter end­ed June 30, about 46 per cent of Ap­ple's to­tal rev­enue, ac­cord­ing to da­ta com­piled by Bloomberg. Ap­ple in­tro­duced a new­er ver­sion of the iPhone on Sep­tem­ber 12 that has a big­ger screen, faster chip and ac­cess to speed­i­er wire­less net­works. (Bloomberg)