A federal judge has refused to block Samsung from selling nine of its phones in the U.S. after Apple had called for the ban in light of a recent jury awarding the company $119 million in damages over Samsung's infringement of technology.
It is the latest in the ongoing saga between the top two smartphone manufacturers that began four years ago after Apple accused Samsung of using iPhone technology in its devices.
Apple had originally asked for $2.2 billion in damages, but the jury reduced the sum to $119 million over the South Korean phone maker's using of iPhone technology.
Despite that ruling, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, Calif., ruled against Apple's request to prevent the future selling of any of the nine Samsung devices that had infringed on the Cupertino-based company's technology.
In refusing the request, Koh argued that Apple did not prove that Samsung's using the technology had hurt its own sales of products. One of the arguments for this was that Apple had, in the past, licensed some of the features to Samsung that Samsung then infringed upon. This meant that phones using that technology had already existed before the infringements.
"We remain committed to providing American consumers with a wide choice of innovative products," Samsung said in praising Koh's ruling.
Among the components Samsung infringed upon are the auto-correction feature taken from the iPhone's keyboard, the ability to create email addresses and phone numbers appearing in text format, and the now-traditional method of swiping the display to unlock the screen.
Despite the legal battle between the two companies, across the globe both are continuing to dominate markets and locations, with their devices being the top choices for users. Most analysts don't expect this trend to end anytime soon, Tech Times reports.
Statistics published earlier this month show that Apple and Samsung remain dominant in the sector, Samsung with 27 percent. Observers don't believe this will change in the near future as both companies plan on launching updated versions of their devices or, in Apple's case, the new iPhone 6 this fall.
Still, Apple had hoped that it could reduce Samsung's ability to compete in the U.S. by forcing it away from selling many devices. But Judge Koh refused to push that forward.
