A legal ruling could see Apple banned from selling iPhones made with Chinese displays within the US. The ruling is not yet final, but looks very likely to take effect later this year.
Apple would be banned from the US sale of any iPhone whose display was made by China’s BOE, after the company was found to have stolen manufacturing techniques from Samsung …
Apple sources iPhone displays from three companies: Samsung, LG, and BOE. Samsung accused BOE of infringing on its trade secrets, and filed a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC).
The ITC has the power to ban companies from both importing products into the US, and selling them there, where it finds those products infringe on patents or other trade secrets.
It was the ITC which banned Apple from importing and selling Apple Watches with the blood oxygen feature after the company was found to have infringed patents owned by healthtech company Masimo. Apple was forced to disable the feature in watches sold within the US.
ET News reports that the ITC has upheld Samsung’s complaint against BOE.
Samsung Display won a decisive victory in the organic light-emitting diode (OLED) trade secret infringement lawsuit filed against the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) against China’s BOE. Because the ITC decided that it should recognize the infringement of BOE trade secrets in the preliminary judgment and impose measures to ban imports.
While this is only a preliminary ruling, scheduled to be finalized in November, the site reports that these decisions are very rarely reversed.
The preliminary judgment is not the final conclusion, but it has a significant impact because the ITC makes an investigation into unfair trade. It is extremely rare for the preliminary judgment to be overturned in the final judgment.
Unless vetoed by the president, the ruling would then take effect and Apple would no longer be able to bring into the US any iPhone models containing displays made by BOE, nor sell any of its existing stock of these models.
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