Samsung CEO Choi-Gee-sung and Apple CEO Tim Cook will meet for settlement talks before U.S. Magistrate Judge Joseph C. Spero in San Francisco, as ordered on Monday by U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh.

There’s no guarantee of a settlement, and they have three months to arrange the meeting, but this is the first time in the series of patent disputes between the companies that such high-level settlement talks have been ordered by the court.

Samsung and Apple do billions of dollars of business with each other, and Apple is Samsung’s largest customer for components for its iPhone and iPad. But Apple has taken exception to the similarity of Samsung’s smartphones and tablets to its own mobile devices and has accused Samsung of “slavishly copying” its devices. The resulting series of lawsuits have bounced from courtrooms in the U.S. to Europe.

For Steve Jobs, this legal battle against Samsung and others was a proxy in his defensive attack against Android — which he believed to be a direct rip-off of iOS. But since succeeding Jobs as CEO, it’s not clear Cook feels the same way about destroying Android or those who use it.

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Patents blog FOSS Patents explains:

The judge explained that the court does not hold Apple to infringe claim 9 of EP1053613 on a ‘method and system for generating a complex pseudonoise sequence for processing a code division multiple access [CDMA] signal’. In the court’s opinion, MMI failed to present conclusive evidence for its infringement contention.

Motorola had argued that the patent named above was “essential,” meaning that someone — in this case, Apple — would have to use technology covered by the patent if they’re using an industry-standard practice. The problem is, the judge didn’t see it that way and says Motorola didn’t present a convincing case that the patent was essential.

Just a week ago, Motorola claimed victory on two separate rulings related to its ongoing intellectual property battle with Apple. In the first, an injunction was granted against older iPhone and iPad models that infringed on a GPRS-related patent. And in the second, Motorola won an injunction against Apple devices that receive push email notifications from its iCloud system in Germany. Apple said it would appeal both.

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In delivering the ruling, judge Andreas Mueller suggested that the court didn’t like Apple’s chances for maintaining the validity of the patent claim, saying that “Samsung has shown that it is more likely than not that the patent will be revoked because of a technology that was already on the market before the intellectual property had been filed for protection.”

It’s a win for Samsung, and one that will no doubt take the sting out of a ruling Tuesday that saw a Düsseldorf court uphold an injunction against the original Galaxy Tab 10.1. This injunction also would have applied to a technical patent, not design IP, which would’ve been much harder for Samsung to work around with simple software or hardware modifications.

Samsung’s bigger concern will still be the pending European Commission’s investigation related to its legal use of patents requiring fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) licensing terms, which the EU regulatory body formally announced on Tuesday.

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Samsung has already sidestepped the initial injunction against the Tab 10.1 by releasing the Tab 10.1N in the German market, which features a redesigned case that avoids infringing on Apple’s community design patent. The ruling on Tuesday was based on a violation of German unfair competition law, Florian Mueller of FOSS Patents notes, and not on the original community design the injunction was issued for.

Mueller thinks that the win in the Düsseldorf appeals court is a bit of a mixed bag. On one hand, the ruling is obviously in Apple’s favor. On the other, it doesn’t necessarily apply to the redesigned Samsung 10-inch tablet, so there is no guarantee it will have any commercial impact for Apple. Also, the full-blown proceeding still has to happen, and that’s where the more important matter of Apple’s design patent will take place. Finally, Mueller says that in general, design-related lawsuits will probably have much less of an impact on the final outcome of the intellectual property value between the two companies than technical patent infringement claims, because they are relatively easy to work around.

In what may end up being a much more significant problem for Samsung, Tuesday also saw the announcement of a full-blown investigation of Samsung’s use of its patents, which fall under fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory (FRAND) licensing requirements. The European Commission had this to say in its formal press release on the issue:

The European Commission has opened a formal investigation to assess whether Samsung Electronics has abusively, and in contravention of a commitment it gave to the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), used certain of its standard essential patent rights to distort competition in European mobile device markets, in breach of EU antitrust rules.

Samsung will now face a formal inquiry regarding its claims of infringement on patents deemed to be essential in the EU. The action was likely prompted by Samsung’s infringement claims against Apple, which it went after in multiple EU courts regarding patents carrying FRAND licensing requirements.

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The ITC’s initial ruling, which was handed downDec. 19, found HTC devices running Android  infringed on an Apple patent related to how data in notes and other documents, including emails and phone numbers, are automatically linked to other relevant external apps. HTC quickly responded to the decision, saying it had a software tweak in place that would allow it to avoid the ban entirely.

The specifics of Apple’s appeal, which FOSS Patents’ Florian Mueller discovered after Apple referenced it in a filing related to its ongoing case against Motorola, seems to involve U.S. patent No. 6,343,262, which details “a real-time signal processing system for serially transmitted data.” Mueller has described it as one that’s likely “extremely hard to work around.” The ITC initially denied that patent’s inclusion in its import ban, but in Apple’s filing in the Motorola case Tuesday, it seems likely Apple is trying to get it included in the scope of the decision via the appeal. Mueller suggests the appeal may also address other issues, including additional patents and the terms of the ban.

Mueller says ITC decisions appealed to the CAFC take some time to resolve, so it might be a while before we see any ruling. One thing is certain however; Apple’s nearly $100 billion cash pile means it’s likely in no real rush to settle its ongoing legal disputes.

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In the original ruling, Apple actually came out somewhat ahead; it won a preliminary injunction against Galaxy smartphones related to an image gallery scroll patent, which Samsung later modified its software to avoid. The original ruling denied Apple’s claims related to Samsung’s tablets at the same time, however.

The Dutch appeals court found Apple’s asserted design-related right is valid, but also narrow in scope, and Samsung does not infringe upon that narrow scope with its device designs. The court considered size pieces of prior art in the form of devices from other companies, as well as U.S., Canadian and Japanese patents to determine the scope of Apple’s design claim.

A German court in Düsseldorf, ruling on the same issue earlier, found Samsung had infringed Apple’s designs and ordered a preliminary injunction. That prompted Samsung to introduce the Galaxy Tab 10.1N, a redesigned version of its 10-inch tablet specific to the German market. That injunction is up for appeal, too, and should come down next week.

On the one hand, Apple at least retains its community design right, but on the other, this decision is definitely a blow to its plans to attempt to hurt Samsung’s sales.

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The Samsung tablet will hit store shelves in Australia starting this week, after the Australian Federal Court overturned the preliminary injunction Apple had previously managed to secure. Apple was denied the chance to appeal the Federal Court’s ruling to the High Court on Friday. Preorders for the tablet at some Australian carriers have already begun.

Samsung had originally intended to launch the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in late summer 2011, but at first it voluntarily delayed its launch in compliance with recommendations from the Australian court and then was formally prohibited from selling the device.

The subsequent delay in its launch must have cost Samsung sales, but the company’s Australian VP of Telecommunications, Tyler McGee, was all about the upside in a recent interview with the Sydney Morning Herald. He said, ”At the end of the day the media awareness certainly made the Galaxy Tab 10.1 a household name compared to probably what it would’ve been based on the investment that we would’ve put into it from a marketing perspective.”

McGee anticipates, in fact, that Samsung won’t even be able to bring in enough supply to satisfy demand for the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in the near term. Telecom analyst Foad Fadaghi isn’t quite so sure Samsung’s rosy estimates will necessarily bear fruit, however, saying that while the case definitely has given Samsung significant mind share, that won’t necessarily translate to actual device sales.

Still, Fadaghi predicts that Samsung will move into second behind Apple in the tablet market in Australia. It is already first in mobile phones and smartphones in the country, having moved into the top spot in August.

Apple’s goal in picking patent fights seems to have been to shut down the competition completely, at least according to Apple’s own lawyers and statements made by former CEO Steve Jobs. But if it is actually raising the profile of Apple’s next-closest competitor, one has to question whether the occasional gains are worth the ongoing expenditure.

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Australian retailer dMavo’s Managing Director, Wojtek Czarnocki, told the Sydney Morning Herald that whether “Apple [is] just bluffing” or if the company “really want[s] to play the cat and mouse game,” dMavo is “up for it.” He’s already taken the precaution of setting up an Asian-based server and affiliate arm that handles shipping and sales of Galaxy Tab devices, which he believes puts dMavo’s Galaxy Tab sales to Australian customers outside of the ruling’s jurisdiction.

The injunction only applies to Samsung for now, but Australian lawyer Mark Summerfield told the Sydney Morning Herald that Apple could easily apply to get the injunction extended to Australian retailers. Judging by Apple’s sending of warning missives to parties like dMavo, the iPhone maker has been hoping that just the threat of legal action will be enough to convince those retailers to comply.

Offshoring some of its business may make it more difficult for Apple to shut down those operations, Summerfield says, since it may have to seek out injunctions in the countries where the offending retailers are moving their operations. He says that the Australian parts of the business could “still be held liable for infringement, costs and damages associated with the sales,” and notes that Australian judges “are almost obliged to find some way to punish [dMavo] to ensure that the courts retain their authority.”

Another retailer doing business in Australia, Mobicity.com.au, says it is Hong Kong–owned, so not tied by the Australian ruling. Again, even with this loophole an Australian court might find a way to assign punitive measures to its Australian-based components.

At this point, it looks like Apple will have to directly target errant online operations in order to stop them from selling the Galaxy Tab 10.1 or make it financially unwise for them to do so. With similar attempts to block the sale of Samsung and other Android devices ongoing around the world, you have to wonder if similar situations won’t arise in those markets, too. In other words, if Apple is indeed digging in for an all-out war with Android, victories in big battles could lead to smaller ones that draw this conflict out for a long, long time.

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The Federal Court of Australia granted Apple’s request for a temporary injunction against the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Australia on Oct. 13, pending a full trial, which likely won’t take place until 2012. Samsung argued that the injunction would essentially mean that its larger Android tablet was essentially dead in the water in Australia, since it would miss the lucrative holiday buying season.

Samsung immediately signaled its intention to appeal the decision, and on Thursday, the Federal Court in Sydney granted Samsung the right to fast-track its appeal (via the Sydney Morning Herald). While an exact date hasn’t yet been set, the hope on Samsung’s side is that it can get the issue decided quickly, in an effort to overturn the ban ahead of the holiday shopping season.

Samsung initially opposed the fast-tracking of its full Australian hearing in the tablet dispute, owing to the fact that it needed more time to prepare its case, according to its lawyers.

Meanwhile, Apple is wasting no time in making sure its recent victory actually does stop the sale of Samsung’s devices down under. Local retailers have apparently been complying with the injunction order, but online stores haven’t been as eager to take the ruling seriously. Apple is issuing legal threats by letter to some of the offending sites, but the reach of the ruling only goes so far. Companies based in Hong Kong, for example, who wish to sell to Australia might not have to abide by the ruling, depending on how you interpret the letter of the law.

Recent comments made by Steve Jobs in his biography suggest that Apple’s goal (at least under Jobs) was not a cross-licensing agreement or settlement but the ultimate destruction of Android. If that remains the company’s strategy, it’s unlikely that Apple will ignore the issue of online retailers who continue to sell Samsung’s products thanks to legal loopholes.

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Apple told the court its “main reason” for seeking the hearings in the first place was to “prevent the launch of the Galaxy tablet and maintain the status quo,” according to lawyer Steven Burley (as quoted by Reuters). Basically, it sounds like no other outcome would have pleased Apple or its counsel, so I doubt any Samsung offer had much chance of being accepted.

The judge in the case had suggested last week that both sides push for an expedited trial in order to potentially avoid more delays for Samsung in Australia, but Samsung’s lawyers told the hearing on Tuesday that if a ruling doesn’t arrive “by mid-October, there is no urgency.” It would rather wait until later to prepare its defence, the Korean company’s lawyers said. Should the Galaxy Tab 10.1 miss the crucial Christmas shopping season window, Samsung argued that the tablet would be “commercially dead” in the Australian market anyway.

If an injunction is instituted, or a decision significantly delayed, then it appears that the Samsung 10-inch tablet may be dead in the water in Australia. That would be a major victory for Apple, but also one that could significantly escalate the legal fight between the two. Reuters’ report includes well-placed sources stating Samsung plans to attempt to block the sale of the iPhone 5, which will likely be revealed and dated by Apple later Tuesday.

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