Score one for Samsung.
A U.S. judge has denied Apple's request for a preliminary injunction against several Samsung Electronics products. A ruling in Apple's favor would have blocked Samsung from selling some of its products in the U.S..
While Apple has maintained that several devices from Samsung's Galaxy line of smartphones and tablets are "slavishly" copying Apple iPhone and iPad devices, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California, didn't think Samsung's gadgets posed enough of a threat that they should be immediately banned.
"It is not clear that an injunction on Samsung's accused devices would prevent Apple from being irreparably harmed," Koh wrote, according to Reuters.
However, Koh's ruling doesn't reject Apple's patent infringement claims against the South Korea-based electronics giant.
"It's possible that Apple will get a more favorable outcome on some of the asserted rights in the main proceeding," Foss Patents speculates.
On Friday, Australia's highest court extended a ban on Samsung's Galaxy Tab in that country, Reuters reported. Though the injunction blocking sales of the device had been overturned on Wednesday, Apple managed to win a weeklong extension of the ban.
"It's no coincidence that Samsung's latest products look a lot like the iPhone and iPad, from the shape of the hardware to the user interface and even the packaging," an Apple rep told All Things D back in April, shortly after filing suit against Samsung. "This kind of blatant copying is wrong, and we need to protect Apple's intellectual property when companies steal our ideas."
Take a look at our slideshow (below) to see a side-by-side of Apple's iDevices and Samsung's various Galaxy gadgets.