According to documents filed on July 13, Judge Torres has granted summary judgment in favor of Ripple Labs with regard to whether Ripple (XRP) token is or is not a security.

The judge ruled that the XRP token "is not necessarily a security on its face" - except when it was sold to raise funds from institutions.

The SEC lawsuit sought to compel Ripple to stop offering its XRP token under the premise that XRP was a security and, thus, required additional regulation. 

Per court documents viewed by Cointelegraph:

"Defendants' motion for summary judgment is GRANTED as to the Programmatic Sales, the Other Distributions, and Larsen's and Garlinghouse's sales, and DENIED as to the Institutional Sales."

Federal district judge Analisa Torres ruled that programmatic sales to public buyers and distributions of XRP to Ripple Labs employees did not constitute the sale of unregistered securities.

The court did not address secondary market sales of XRP on cryptocurrency exchanges.

As Bitcoinist reports, according to the court ruling:

Institutional buyers who directly purchased XRP from Ripple had a reasonable expectation that their investment would contribute to improving the XRP ecosystem and increase the value of XRP.

However, programmatic buyers (meaning the broader public) accounted for less than 1% of global XRP trading volume, and the sales were "blind bid/ask transactions" where buyers could not have known if their payments went to Ripple or any other seller of XRP.

The court further noted that Ripple did not make any promises or offers concerning programmatic sales, as the company did not know who was buying the XRP, and the purchasers did not know who was selling it.