Samsung won perhaps its most significant victory to date when it defended an import ban with the U.S. International Trade Commission against various Apple products. The agency granted the company a limited exclusion order against older iPhone and iPad models, including the iPhone 4 and iPad 2. The ruling is slated to take effect in early August, however Apple is looking to overturn the decision with the United States Trade Representative, a governing body that can veto the ITC’s ruling.
According to FOSS Patents, the company wrote to the USTR and claimed that Samsung didn’t fulfill its promise to license the related technology, which it claims to be a standards essential patent, on fair and reasonable terms. Apple argued that the “decision makes the ITC an outlier internationally and domestically,” adding that the ruling will result in “the long-term, dynamic harm to competition and innovation in the United States that would come from subverting the standard-setting process and facilitating patent hold-up.”
Meanwhile, Samsung argued that the import ban should be upheld. The company claims that Apple is unwilling to license its intellectual property, including the patent in question, which pertains to encoding and decoding cellular data.
