Apple Inc has scored a big hit against long-time smartphone rival, Samsung, when the court of appeals ruled that Apple was entitled to an injunction when it violated the company's patents. Apple believes that Samsung should be made to pay monetary damages for loss of profit and bar them from using certain features that violated the company's patents.

This new legal development on Thursday has caused quite a stir in the tech community and it could impact the way Samsung will manufacture phones in the future. Apple claims that, because of the infringement, they lost market shares and downstream sales by forcing the company to compete with its own patented products. Apple believes that Samsung can remove the the patented features without having to recall their phones from the market.

So what was the stolen patents, you may ask? The patents in question is the slide-to-unlock feature, the autocorrect function and the data detection feature, which allows a user to call and save/call a number sent via email or SMS. Apple has made compelling arguments that these features are something that customers looked for when buying a product.

That may seem a flimsy statement, but it was an impressive feature when smartphones were in its early days. Sure, Samsung has a lot of selling points that made it more popular than Apple, but it could be argued that Apple was raising the red flag the whole time. Plugging leaks and trying to come up with a better phone while your competition is snatching up patents can't be that easy.

While an argument can be made that these features don't really weigh in when smartphones were purchased, the fact that Samsung copied these features when it manufactured for Apple (way back then), is the crux of the matter. This legal victory for Apple should pave way for better practices on both manufacturer and phone maker.