Apple vs. Samsung initially ended with a billion-dollar verdict in favor of Apple, but there have been plenty of wrinkles since. This week brought about another, as Nokia filed an amicus brief on behalf of Apple, Inc. in the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. In the brief filed Monday, Nokia asked the court to permit permanent injunctions on the sale of Samsung phones that were found to infringe Apple's patents.
Post-trial proceedings haven't been as kind to Apple after the company was awarded $1.05 billion in damages in August. US District Judge Lucy Koh nearly halved those damages in a ruling on Friday, and in December she denied Apple a permanent injunction against Samsung which would have barred the sale of Samsung phones found to be infringing.
Nokia is the only company to support Apple's case, filing the brief after getting a 14-day extension to submit beyond the February 19 deadline. The brief itself is currently under seal, but Nokia offered a summary as well. In this, Nokia attorney Keith Broyles argued that Apple should be allowed to ban Samsung phones from the market and that, according to Reuters, Judge Koh “erred by ruling that Apple must establish a 'causal nexus' between its patented feature and the demand for its phones in order to secure a permanent injunction.”
Nokia then warned that failure to issue an injunction "could cause wide-ranging damage to the United States patent protection landscape.”
Nokia and Apple are competitors when it comes to moving hardware off the shelves, and the two companies even opposed each other in a patent trial in 2009 (ending in Apple settling with Nokia for an undisclosed sum). But Nokia has been vocal about supporting its patent rights recently, even discussing its decision to sell some of its intellectual property to patent-holding company Mosaid at the Federal Trade Commission in December.
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