The US International Trade Commission has slapped an import ban on several Samsung products but delayed its implementation pending a review by the Obama administration, the Wall Street Journal has reported.
The ruling was the latest development in a more than two-year-old patent battle between Samsung and Apple.
The trade body said that the import ban should encompass several older model Samsung phones which violate two Apple patents. But it cleared the Korean electronics giant of violating four other patents held by the iPhone maker.
The ruling came a week after the Obama administration vetoed an ITC ban on older iPhone models which it found to have violated Samsung patents.
The two companies also clashed in a separate hearing in a US Court of Appeals on Friday over whether Samsung should be allowed to continue to sell older products that a jury found to have violated Apple patents last year.
Samsung has argued that the patents in question are minor features on its phones and that Apple has not been able to show that they affected the sales of iPhones negatively. Apple is pressing for the import ban to be imposed, in a strategy that could allow it to request a ban on Samsung’s best-selling Galaxy S4 smartphone.