Almost immediately after learning of Federal Judge Lucy Koh's order granting Apple's request for a preliminary injunction on Galaxy Nexus devices, Samsung filed a motion to stay the ban — primarily until the appellate court could consider the merits of its appeal. Judge Koh has now issued an order denying Samsung's request, thus ensuring the injunction will remain in place for the time being. It looks like all Apple needs to do is post the $96 million bond for the injunction to come to life — a small monetary hurdle for the Cupertino company.

Samsung's request for a stay was a long shot, especially given Judge Koh's unwillingness to grant a similar request by Samsung relating to the injunction on the Galaxy Tab 10.1. After all, such a stay would require the judge to disagree with her own decision from just a few days ago. That's simply not going to happen very often.

The court's injunction order found that Android's "Quick Search Box" feature infringed Apple's US patent number 8,086,604, which covers feeding predetermined heuristic algorithms to different searchable areas via a single unified search interface. It looks like one of Samsung's main arguments for overturning the injunction on appeal is that the '604 is invalid in view of a patent that predates it — US 6,324,534. However, it seems Samsung failed to argue that the '534 patent invalidated Apple's patent in its opposition to the injunction request. As such, Judge Koh minimized the value of the '534 patent, stating that the court "does not look favorably upon Samsung's endeavor now to re-litigate the merits of the '604 patent's validity based on what is effectively new prior art." Koh goes on to reason that "because the Federal Circuit is unlikely to consider a prior art reference for the first time on appeal, the court is doubtful that Samsung can show a likelihood of success on appeal based on the ['534 patent] reference."

That's all presumably bad news for Samsung, but we'll have to wait and see if the appellate court agrees that Samsung has squandered an opportunity to challenge the validity of Apple's patent. Of course, Samsung will also appeal Judge Koh's finding that the Galaxy Nexus' unified search capabilities infringe Apple's patent in the first place. If it can convince the appellate court that it doesn't infringe, the timing and merits of invalidity arguments would become unimportant.

Update: We've now obtained confirmation from the court's online docketing system that Apple has posted the nearly $96 million bond. Basically, the injunction is now in full effect. Although, we assume the court will still need to go back and examine Google's assertions that the upcoming OTA update of the Galaxy Nexus will be a legitimate workaround to the '604 patent. We're keeping a close eye on things and will provide further updates as we learn more.