Apple says ITC ban on BOE displays has no effect on iPhones [U]

There’s been speculation that a legal ruling could see Apple banned from selling iPhones made with Chinese displays within the US, but Apple has now confirmed that this is not the case.

The U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) has upheld a complaint by Samsung that China’s BOE had stolen trade secrets relating to OLED screens, and banned the import of products containing these …

The ITC ruling

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.

My reading of this would be that BOE engaged in industrial espionage to discover Samsung’s manufacturing processes, and then replicated these.

iPhones not affected

Apple sources iPhone displays from three companies: Samsung, LG, and BOE. It was therefore assumed that infringing displays would be found in some iPhones, and that these would be affected

However, Apple has now told us that no iPhones are affected by the ban. This is likely because the ban applies to specific OLED screen types not used in iPhones. The company said:

Apple is not a party to this case, and the order has no impact on any Apple products.

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Photo by Amanz on Unsplash