[JURIST] A federal judge for the US District Court for the Northern District of California [official website] on Wednesday ordered [text, PDF] Apple to disclose a full copy of its settlement agreement with HTC to Samsung Electronics [corporate websites]. HTC and Apple announced earlier this month that they had reached a global settlement [JURIST report] dismissing all patent lawsuits between the two companies. Samsung hopes that the settlement details will help the company at a hearing scheduled for December over Apple’s bid for a permanent US sales ban on eight Samsung smartphone models and one tablet computer. Samsung has also requested that the court add the iPod Touch 5, the iPad 4, and the iPad mini to the list of Apple devices that it claims have infringed on Samsung patents.

Apple and Samsung have been embroiled in continuous patent litigation in courts around the world. In October, the Dutch Rechtbank’s-Gravenhage [official website] court ruled that Samsung did not infringe [JURIST report] on an Apple software patent. In the same month a UK court also ruled that Samsung did not infringe [JURIST report] on an Apple design patent. In the same time frame Apple appealed a Tokyo District Court ruling [JURIST report] which dismissed the company’s claim that Samsung had infringed on its patents. At the beginning of October, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit [official website] reversed an injunction [JURIST report] against Samsung that prevented it from selling its Galaxy Nexus product. Earlier in August, Apple won a $1.05 billion judgment [JURIST report] in the Northern District of California against Samsung involving other patent infringements.