Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) won a $1.05 billion jury award against Samsung Electronics in August, but that didn’t stop the Cupertino giant from seeking to have the U.S. District Court ban U.S. sales of 26 Samsung products that were found to have infringed Apple patents. That ban, presumably, represented Apple’s pound of flesh.

In a ruling filed last night, the federal judge in the appeal denied the ban, saying that Apple had not established a case for a permanent injunction on Samsung’s products. The test for this sort of injunction is whether or not the infringing features were the very ones that were driving consumer demand for Samsung’s products. Apple could not meet that (admittedly extremely stringent) test.

The ruling was not really a surprise. The judge in the case has said virtually guaranteed that the case will remain on its current path. She has denied Samsung’s request for a new trial based on alleged misconduct by the jury foreman and has postponed a ruling on Apple’s request to increase the amount of damages due from Samsung.

Last night’s ruling has had no discernible impact on Apple’s share price, which is up nearly 1% in mid-morning trading at $523.66 in a 52-week range of $387.26 to $705.07.

Paul Ausick

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