Pocket Cube court affirmed the judgment that Rubik's 2×2×2 Pocket Cube infringed Nichols's patent, but overturned the judgment on Rubik's 3×3×3 Cube. Any permutation of the eight corners is possible (8! positions), and seven of them can be independently rotated (3 positions). There is nothing identifying the orientation of the cube in space, reducing the positions by a factor of 24. This is because all 24 possible positions and orientations of the first corner are equivalent due to the lack of fixed centers. This factor does not appear when calculating the permutations of N×N×N cubes where N is odd, since those puzzles
Soma cube their faces, such that at least one inside corner is formed. There is one combination of three cubes that satisfies this condition, and six combinations of four cubes that satisfy this condition, of which two are mirror images of each other (see Chirality). Thus, 3 + (6 × 4) is 27, which is exactly the number of cells in a 3×3×3 cube. The Soma cube was analyzed in detail by John Horton Conway on September 1958 in Mathematical Games column in "Scientific American", and the book "Winning Ways for your Mathematical Plays" also contains a detailed analysis of the Soma