In a new setback for Apple, a federal judge has rejected the company’s plea to ban US sales of Samsung smartphones that infringed on its patents. Apple had asked for a permanent injunction against certain Samsung mobile devices, most of which were from the flagship Galaxy line, after a jury found in May that the South Korean company had infringed on three of its patents, and awarded the iPhone maker nearly $120 million in damages, just 5 percent of the more than $2 billion that Apple had originally sought. The patents in question cover Apple’s ‘slide-to-unlock’ feature, the so-called ‘quick links’ feature for scanning text to identify certain types of structures such as phone numbers, dates and email addresses, and auto correct.
