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
Nine-Colour Cube one corner, one edge and one face centre each. The puzzle has eight corner pieces, which can be permutated in 8! different ways, and twelve edge pieces, which can be permutated in 12! ways. The position of the face centre pieces is fixed, therefore there is only one possible permutation for the face centres. Since all cubies only consist of one colour (unlike on the Rubik's Cube), they have no visible orientation and therefore this is not taken into account. The exact number of combinations is not yet reached because of several constraints: As some pieces are identical to each