Apple has suffered an early loss in its patent suit against Motorola. An administrative law judge (ALJ) with the International Trade Commission (ITC) issued an initial ruling late on Friday, saying that Motorola did not violate three of Apple's smartphone patents. The decision signals potential trouble for Apple, though it still faces the approval of a six-person ITC panel.

Apple and Motorola have been embroiled in a series of lawsuits both in federal court and with the ITC since 2010, when Motorola first accused Apple of violating a wide range of its patents covering 3G, GPRS, and 802.11 technologies, antenna design, proximity sensing, and device synchronization, to name a few. As is typical for these patent disputes, Apple immediately responded with its own countersuits, claiming that Motorola's Android-based smartphones were infringing on Apple's own intellectual property.

Friday's ruling isn't yet the final word from the ITC, and the panel doesn't always rule the same way as the ALJ. Still, the decision is an indicator that Apple's IP fight against Android may not be as easy as former Apple CEO Steve Jobs might have hoped when he said he hoped to "go thermonuclear war" against the platform. Though Apple has not commented publicly on the initial ITC ruling, Motorola was quick to send out a victorious statement for its early win.

"We are pleased with [Friday's] favorable outcome for Motorola Mobility," Motorola Mobility general counsel Scott Offer said in a statement. "Motorola Mobility has worked hard over the years to develop technology and build an industry-leading intellectual property portfolio. We are proud to leverage this broad and deep portfolio to create differentiated innovations that enhance the user experience."

This is the second recent setback Apple has faced when it comes to its mobile patents and Motorola—the first one came in December when a German court issued an injunction against Apple over one of Motorola's cellular data transmission patents. Apple did, however, recently win an ITC ruling against another Android smartphone maker, HTC, with the manufacturer facing a potential import ban on its Android-based devices starting in April of this year. Still, HTC claims it has already figured out how to remove the offending features in its devices, so it's unlikely that HTC's smartphones will actually be banned from import into the US anytime soon.