Nokia Joins Apple In Bid For Samsung Ban
In a surprising twist, Windows Phone device manufacturer Nokia has filed a brief with US courts in support of Apple’s ongoing legal battle against Samsung.
Acting as an amicus curiae (friend of the court, a party who offers information to a case they are not directly involved with), Nokia has filed a brief on behalf of Apple to the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit this week.
In the brief, Nokia asked the court to permit permanent injunctions on the sale of Samsung phones that were found to infringe Apple’s patents.
As part of its ongoing legal battle with Samsung, Apple has repeatedly requested the courts to impose an injunction on the sale of Samsung products that have infringed on the iPhone maker’s patents.
As noted by Reuters, the brief itself is currently sealed, but an accompanying motion supplies an overview of Nokia’s argument. The company questions Judge Koh’s December ruling requiring a patent holder to first establish a “causal nexus” between a patented feature and customer demand before securing a permanent injunction against offending products. If such a precedent were set, Nokia asserts, the ability of patent holders to obtain sales bans would be crippled.
[quote]The “causal nexus” requirement as applied by the district court here, making the evidentiary standard for obtaining a permanent injunction so burdensome and strict that it may rarely, if ever, be met, will essentially lead to a compulsory-licensing system wherein patent holders are forced to license patented technology to competing firms, which could in turn harm incentives to innovate.[/quote]
In her ruling late last year, Judge Lucy Koh said that sales bans on Samsung products will not be given, and they can only be removed from sale if the feature deemed to infringe on a patent is one that is solely responsible for consumer demand for the product.
[Apple Insider]
