Samsung has been dealt another patent blow in a Northern California courtroom, and this time it involves a product that isn’t woefully out of date. Apple has been awarded a preliminary injunction against sales of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus — an important product for Google’s Android strategy — in the U.S., according to a report.
Reuters was at the courtroom in San Jose, Calif., where Judge Lucy Koh once again slapped an injunction on a Samsung product running Android. However, this time, instead of an injunction against the Galaxy Tab 10.1 (which never sold that well when it was new on the market a year ago), the device in question is Galaxy Nexus, the flagship device for Google’s Android 4.0 software release. The Nexus was just given away to all attendees at Google I/O this week.
Apple will have to post a $ 95 million bond to enforce the injunction, but that amount of money is pocket change for the company. From Samsung’s standpoint, the news might not be quite as bad given that it just introduced the Samsung Galaxy S III to great fanfare, but from Google’s standpoint, the news isn’t very welcome. Google’s Nexus program is designed to showcase the company’s approach to user interface design, free from outside influences added to smartphones from handset makers and carriers, and if the injunction holds, Samsung won’t be able to sell those phones in the U.S.
And to top it all off, Bloomberg reported late Friday that the U.S. Federal Trade Commission is investigating whether or not Motorola — now part of Google — has been abusing so-called “standards essential patents” in its legal battles with Apple and Microsoft. Even coming off the high of Google I/O, these developments are not good for Google and Android.
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