Apple Loses Tablet Battle In Australia

New submitter harmic writes "The Australian Federal High Court has denied Apple's appeal against the earlier decision that overturned the ban on sales of the Galaxy Tab. The Samsung Android based tablets should be in the shops in a matter of days. Apple had attempted to appeal an earlier court ruling overturning the ban."

Comments

What an appalling title

[Anonymous Coward]

"Apple loses appeal to ban Samsung Galaxy Tab in Australia" - beyond your abilities to write that?

Appalling title.

Re:What an appalling title

[errandum]

How so? It's a fairly accurate description O_o.

You're kind of nitpicking here, in my opinion.

Re:What an appalling title

[kno3]

Not in my opinion. It is an appallingly misleading title. The tablet battle definitely implies the sales battle. This title would almost always point to Apple not being as popular as another brand. Most people reading that title would not expect it to mean they loose a court ruling.

denied with costs?

[SmallFurryCreature]

Googling it returns this news story, does it mean Apple will have to pay Samsungs legal costs or even what Samsung is going to claim they have lost because of it?

Apple case isn't looking good, they are getting thrown out all over the world and the small wins are for trivial stuff Samsung can and has worked around. Meanwhile Apples reputation has taken a nosedive not being helped that Jobs epitaph seems to consist of "prick in a turtleneck". Screwing your partner out of a few hundred when he will one day make you a billionaire is just sad.

I still wonder what Apple was thinking. Yes, the Samsung tablets and for that matter anyone elses look a lot alike. And? I tried it at a local super store. Gosh, they are indeed very similar. Then I wandered over the washing machine department. Talk about copy cats. Really, take a LOOK someday, they are ALL the same. Even the place you the soap in. I couldn't find a single model on display where the soap didn't go in on the left. Even the order of pre-wash, wash and fabric softener is like that, from left to right.

And don't even get me started on fridges. white boxes the lot of them. About the only exception are the american models which ALL have the water dispenser in the LEFT door which is narrower then the right door.

So maybe Apple was the first to copy the design from a prop maker. Was it worth it Apple? We who are not fanboys now have fresh ammo to slap your buyers around with now that the one-mouse button joke has gotten a bit stale (mind you, tablets do have only one mouse button... old jokes never die it seems, they just get re-used on slashdot). Injunctions thrown out, might have to pay whatever Samsung is going to claim as damages and you made a Korean mega-corp many times larger and closely tied to a not-so-democratic regime that has taken thousands up on thousands of western job as the sympathetic underdog.

Maybe here is a hint for Apple, next time the lawyers suggest a strategy. Hit them!

Re:denied with costs?

[chrb]

"If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today’s ideas were invented, and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today." - Bill Gates

It wasn't that patenting wasn't allowed, it was just that nobody really understood how generic and obvious patents would be treated in the future. If I could time travel to 1995, I could tell myself to patent connecting a GPS receiver to a laptop and having it query a database running on a secondary server. That would now be called mobile geolocation services, and the patent would be worth billions of dollars. Similarly, at some point in the 90s, I had the idea of transferring executable objects as part of a client/server display. That would now be called a web applet, and again the patent would be worth billions.. If I had only known that adding the suffixes "on the web" or "on a mobile device" was a valid way to create new patents, then I would have patented "telephony... on [the web/mobile device]", "video... on [the web/mobile device]", "instant messaging... on [the web/mobile device]". But, back then, who knew that the system would turn out to be so crazy?!

Re:denied with costs?

[PaladinAlpha]

So you're saying the lack of surface buttons is not significant, and that Apple should lose claims to that as a reason to sue?

Of course it looks nothing like an iPad, because iPads didn't exist when this prototype was displayed. iPad wasn't announced until this flat, capacitive-touchscreen device, with no surface buttons and a relatively uniform bezel was announced, with an emphasis on being as thin and lightweight as possible. It was only after it was publicly demoed that Apple announced the iPad with several of the same design elements -- and a year later began suing people for using those same elements. (Oh, and falsifying legal documents.)

Tough break Apple...

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess you'll have to compete on quality product attributes now like features, support and other factors... You know... Fairly...

Or maybe you still don't get it.

Re:Would be funny if

[Xest]

It'd be even more funny if that happened after Apple had been made to pay for millions in lost sales caused by the ban they requested.

Isn't it about time Xerox sued Apple?

[Viol8]

The Lisa & Mac were total ripoffs of the stuff Jobs saw at Parc. How come Apple seem to think the rules on stealing ideas apply to everyone except themselves? Does being (allegedly) "cool" somehow make hypocrisy ok?

Re:Isn't it about time Xerox sued Apple?

[khipu]

How come Apple seem to think the rules on stealing ideas apply to everyone except themselves?

Group think: if you talk to Apple employees, they really firmly believe that Apple invented it all. Steve Jobs's reality distortion field also applied to himself, as you can see from his over-the-top remarks on a "thermonuclear war on Android" (ironic given how much iPhone rips off from the people who created Android).

And it's self-reinforcing because they keep getting away with it.

Re:Xerox FAIL, Apple Win. Fair play.

[Viol8]

The point is that apple got paid to use someone elses inventions. Xerox were certainly led by typical BA type know nothing donkeys but that doesn't make Apples behaviour right or the hypocrisy any less.

not funny at all

[khipu]

Given how fast the Android market is evolving, Samsung only had a few months to make a profit on the 10.1. Apple killed that window of opportunity with their injunction. Now, newer and better tablets are already out.

Apple lost the case but they hurt Samsung badly. Apple should be made to pay for the harm they did to Samsung. And Apple may have opened themselves up to similar claims against them in the future, as other companies will now start to take out silly design patents as well and use them against Apple product launches.