Spanish Firm Wins Tablet Case Against Apple

pmontra writes "A Spanish company has won a legal case against Apple and will be able to sell an Android tablet that Apple had claimed infringes on the iPad patent. It is now seeking damages from Apple for a temporary seizure of its products by Spanish customs. Furthermore they are pursuing an antitrust complaint against Apple, alleging abusive anticompetitive behavior."

Comments

All I can say is

[Rexdude]

Excellent!.

Re:All I can say is

[siddesu]

And all I can add is:

• there should be stiff penalties for frivolous lawsuits and
• here's one more piece of solid proof that "IP" is mostly used to stiffle competition and innovation, not to promote it.

Live by the sword, die by the sword

[SuperKendall]

We can only hope a few more judgements like these get the whole industry to settle down and allow a little more leeway in advancing tablet design.

If lots of smaller companies like this start fighting back now that they see they can win, the cost of legal action all over the globe will hopefully make so little financial sense Apple will stop suing others, and with them desisting the other companies can back away too.

Re:Live by the sword, die by the sword

[AmiMoJo]

Unfortunately Apple has almost unlimited cash reserves and the stakes are very high, so I doubt they will relent. If they can kill or cripple all competing products it will have huge financial ramifications for years, and not just for tablets by all future devices they can patent. Pumping a few hundred million into open warfare via the courts is easily justifiable.

The best solution would be for the EU to revise patent law to prevent its abuse. For that to happen some big EU companies will have to be attacked with clearly ridiculous patents, e.g. Airbus falling foul of a Boeing patent on "cylindrical flying machine with forward facing observation glass" or being forced to replace "rounded rectangular rubber rolling devices" with sled skis.