On August 9th, the United States International Trade Commission handed Apple another victory in its ongoing patent wars with Samsung by banning the import of Samsung products that infringe on two of Apple’s patents. This order, called an “exclusion order,” triggered a sixty-day review period in which President Obama can veto the ban. And, just as he recently vetoed the I.T.C. ban on certain Apple products that were found to infringe on Samsung patents, he should veto this one.

In its complaint to the I.T.C., Apple accused Samsung of violating a number of patents; the I.T.C. found that Samsung infringed on two of them. The first patent—known by its last three digits as the ’949 patent—covers the multi-touch user interface of the iPhone and iPad’s iOS operating system. In particular, it protects the software that translates the basic gestures that are now second nature to iPhone users, like pinching to zoom and swiping to unlock, into actions. (Apple has other patents that protect the gestures themselves.) The second patent, the ’501 patent, protects Apple’s method of detecting when headphones are yanked out of an iPhone or iPad.

Apple has tried to re-brand the ’949 patent as “the Steve Jobs patent.” This is either an effort to honor Jobs, who is one of its listed inventors, or to shield the patent’s vulnerabilities under the aegis of the notorious Jobs charisma that was sometimes called his “reality distortion field,” depending on whom you believe. There is significant evidence for the latter: the ’949 patent is already under reëxamination by the United States Patent and Trademark Office, and it was, at one point, found to be preliminarily invalid. But the potency of the Jobs name is such that juries, in a potential future patent-infringement suit, may ignore the evidence and succumb to the emotional pull of the man’s story. During a federal patent case against Motorola, in fact, the court forbid Apple from referring to it as the “Jobs patent,” citing precisely that fear.

The I.T.C.’s ruling against Samsung products does not specify which devices are condemned—its scope could theoretically include current products, like those in the company’s Galaxy line of phones and tablets. During the sixty-day review period, Samsung can argue before the I.T.C. that only its oldest devices infringed on the patents. Apple can also counter that Samsung’s software workarounds, designed to keep its newer phones unaffected by the charges, still infringe on the patents.

Even if one were to assume that the Apple patents are valid and enforceable, and that the I.T.C. identified specific Samsung products to ban, the Obama Administration should still veto the Commission’s ruling because an import ban would harmful to consumers, who have benefited from the intense competition between the companies: phones and tablets have arguably gotten better and faster as a result. Especially vulnerable to an import ban may be consumers in underserved and rural markets, who benefit from having access to Samsung’s functionally diverse (and often less expensive) phones.

President Obama vetoed the I.T.C.’s ban on Apple products earlier this month to insist that standard-essential patents—patents that cover basic inventions without which, in this case, a mobile device could not function—should be freely licensed to facilitate the widespread adoption of new technologies. But Apple’s patents are not standard-essential. This time, Obama will have to justify a veto on broader grounds—that import bans in mature, competitive markets are too draconian and not in the public’s interest: while a jury verdict in a patent lawsuit might cost an infringing company a lot of money, an import ban harms not only the company but also suppliers, manufacturers, retailers, and consumers. And unlike monetary damages, which provide a value certain for the use of patented technology, an import ban leaves that value up to interpretation, which inspires further acrimony and legal wrangling.

As patent disputes have effectively taken the place of traditional, often hostile business negotiations, a veto of this ban would be a message to take these proxy battles out of the courtroom and back into the boardrooms where they belong. It would also advance one of the goals of Obama’s technology policy: to change the lax statutory standards governing import bans from the I.T.C. in favor of using the more stringent federal-court standard. Such a step would help ease the gnarled gridlock of the current patent system. Just as important, it would ease international suspicions that the veto of the Apple ban was just favoritism for the home team.

While the Obama Administration considers its position, Apple has taken to a federal court of appeals to ask for a different ban on Samsung products. There, Apple has argued that monetary damages are not enough to dissuade infringers. But American courts, tired of being pawns in the schemes and disputes of multi-billion-dollar technology companies who continue to litigate frivolous lawsuits, may be coming to the opposite conclusion. Another Obama veto would fortify their judgment, and perhaps spur more innovation from technology companies—rather than from their lawyers.

Michael Phillips is an associate at a Wall Street litigation firm.

Photograph by SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg/Getty.