According to the Wall Street Journal, Samsung isn't wasting time on keeping the eight smartphones Apple is demanding injunctions against on store shelves. And no, I'm not talking about an appeal.

Samsung is currently working with the carriers selling at least five of those phones in order to strip them of the features described in the software patents they were deemed to infringe as part of Friday's verdict in Apple v. Samsung. This includes things like scroll bounceback, tap-to-zoom, and multitouch scrolling.

The problem? It may not help at all. Apple is just as (if not more so) entitled to injunctive relief under the design patents Samsung was deemed to infringe, so these efforts may be for naught. For obvious reasons, there is no way Samsung can "work around" design patents on phones it has already designed and manufactured. That said, the eight devices Apple is demanding bans on aren't exactly cutting-edge.

The only device that could escape banishment by removing software features is the Galaxy Prevail, a Boost Mobile budget device.

For some phones, this could mean updates to slightly newer versions of Android (Samsung apparently has none of these infringing features in its 2.3.5 Gingerbread builds). For others, like the Galaxy S II variants, it means nothing (most likely) - they're already on Android 4.0, which should have removed those infringing features. For one or two, though, it just may mean blatant feature-stripping in order to save time.

We'll be on the lookout for these updates in the coming weeks.

WSJ via TheVerge