The U.S. International Trade Commission is expected to make the final ruling on four patent infringements lodged by Apple against Samsung Electronics on August 1st. ITC had ruled that Samsung infringed the patents of Apple in its preliminary rulings, but decided to review the cases again.

On the other hand, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office had made preliminary rulings on two of the Apple's patents that the company claimed infringement, 'method of providing semi-transparent image on the screen (Patent No. 922)' and 'heuristics (Patent No. 949)' are invalid - the public interest is gathering around how ITC would find the claims of Apple in the face of such decisions.

In case ITC confirms the preliminary ruling, President Obama has 60 days to decide whether to accept it or not. If accepted, sales of Samsung's products, including Galaxy S, S2, Nexus and Tab 10.1 will be barred from the U.S. However, the impact for Samsung will be limited since the specific products are either discontinued or old models.

The final ruling may also speed up the patent negotiation between the two companies since none of them have gained any actual benefit from the dispute which dragged on for more than two years.