The US International Trade Commission (ITC) on Friday blocked imports of some older model Samsung mobile devices following complaints by Apple that the South Korean company had violated its patents.
The ruling by the Washington-based trade body was the latest in a long-running and bitter global battle over alleged patent infringement between the two smartphone and tablet computer giants.
The ITC ruled that Samsung had infringed two Apple patents — numbers 949 and 501, dealing with touchscreen actions and headphone jack plug-ins — but cleared the South Korean company of charges that it had violated four more.
“With today’s decision, the ITC has joined courts around the world in Japan, Korea, Germany, Netherlands and California by standing up for innovation and rejecting Samsung’s blatant copying of Apple’s products,” Apple said in a statement.
“Protecting real innovation is what the patent system should be about,” it said.
Spokesman Adam Yates said Samsung is “disappointed that the ITC has issued an exclusion order based on two of Apple’s patents.”
“However, Apple has been stopped from trying to use its overbroad design patents to achieve a monopoly on rectangles and rounded corners,” Yates said, referring to design features at issue in rejected patent claims.
“The proper focus for the smartphone industry is not a global war in the courts, but fair competition in the marketplace,” he said.
“Samsung will continue to launch many innovative products and we have already taken measures to ensure that all our of products will continue to be available in the United States,” the Samsung spokesman said.
It was unclear precisely which devices would be targeted in the ban, but it was aimed at early model smartphones and tablets that are no longer hot products in the US.
“It really doesn’t mean that much,” independent Silicon Valley analyst Rob Enderle said of the ITC ruling.
“It is not the new stuff they are talking about, but the older devices that are more likely to be shipped to emerging markets than here,” he said.
The import block is subject to a review by the White House and Samsung will be allowed to continue to sell the items at issue during the two-month review period.
The ITC ruling raised the question of whether US President Barack Obama’s administration will once again intervene in a patent fight playing out between the companies at the agency.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained