The Patent Wars continue unabated :-Apple Loses One vs Samsung Down Under

The Patent Wars continue unabated. This round is an uneven legal result for Apple; it just won a patent infringement case against handset maker HTC but may lose an appeal by Samsung in Australia.

In the former case, the U.S. International Trade Commission found that Apple did not violate S3 Graphics’ (a subsidiary of HTC) image compression technology. In that special poetry only found in legal notices, the ITC delivered its verdict with the document title, “Notice of final commission determination of no violation and termination of the investigation.”

However, things aren’t going as smoothly for Apple down under. Although the company successfully convinced an Australian court to ban sales of Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 last month until the patent mess between Apple and Samsung was settled, an appeals court isn’t satisfied with the first judge’s ruling.

According to a Bloomberg report, Federal Court Justice Lindsay Foster believes that the original judge in the case (Federal Court Justice Annabelle Bennett) was a little too fair toward Apple and not fair enough toward Samsung. The logic put forth here is that Apple has a weak patent case and therefore not an especially strong chance of winning its suit against Samsung, which Bennett was supposed to take into consideration when imposing an injunction and, in Foster’s estimation, failed to do properly.

The court is expected to make a decision this coming week about lifting the ban or not.