German Appeals Court Confirms Galaxy Tab 10.1 Ban

New submitter Killer Panda sends word that a German Appeals Court has upheld the injunction prohibiting sales of Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Germany. Apple convinced lower courts to issue and uphold the injunction last year by making the case that Samsung's devices "slavishly" copied the iPhone and iPad. "Samsung, which is Apple's supplier as well as a competitor, has been trying to have the German decision overturned while also seeking other means to fight Apple. It redesigned the Galaxy Tab 10.1 for the German market only and named it Galaxy Tab 10.1N to get around the sales ban. Apple challenged the reworked version but a German court last month rejected Apple's claims in a preliminary judgment." The European Union announced some more bad news for Samsung: they'll be investigating the company to see whether its use of patent lawsuits is illegally hindering other companies' use of standardized 3G technology. "Under EU patent rules, a company that holds patents for standardized products is required to license them out indiscriminately at a fair price."

Comments

Princess Syndrome

[killfixx]

Why is it that the most popular girl at the dance is usually the biggest douchebag?

I've seen this behaviour time and again, if it's pretty or popular, it's easier to let all manner of misdeeds slide.

Apple begins a very anti-competitive, design infringement lawsuit against everyone. Samsung fights back to try and protect it's market share. Samsung gets investigated for anti-competitive behaviour.

Popular kid abuses geek, geek fights back, geek gets sent to the principals office. WTF!?

I expected (not accepted) this sort of blatant ignorance then, but when it comes to an entire governing body (excuse my ignorance of EU policy) this sort of nonsense should not be tolerated.

Isn't there some manner of oversight for something like this.

If my son were to insult another student repeatedly, without offending the teacher, that later resulted in said student having a violent outburst, not only would my son be brought up on bullying charges (legit in my state), but so would the teacher for ignoring the bullying.

But corporations are fully allowed to do this without repercussion.

That upsets me.

Shame on them.

Galaxy Tab = better than IPad 2

[dryriver]

Galaxy Tab 10.1 is slimmer, lighter, has a higher res camera, a better screen and longer battery life than IPad 2. Oh, its also cheaper, and unlike iPad 2, can be bought "as is", without being tied to a mandatory 12/24 month dataplan, as is the case with iPad 2 where I live. I don't think Galaxy Tab is a shameless copy of iPad 2. I think that it is a significantly BETTER product that happens to look somewhat similar to iPad 2 (then again, all tablet computers look a lot like each other). Apple is suing because Samsung has produced a superior Tablet Computer. And some crappy court in Germany has decided to uphold this stupid claim. Galaxy Tab is the better tablet of the two, and Apple - being its typical agressive, domineering self - is suing to keep Korean Samsung's superior product out of people's hands, so they have have to go and buy an iPad 2 instead.

Re:Galaxy Tab = better than IPad 2

[dryriver]

The Galaxy Tab 10.1 - being an Android, rather than iOS device - looks and feels nothing like the iPad 2 when its switched on. Completely different UI/graphic design look. In fact it doesn't look remotely similar. Samsung also doesn't call it the sPad or something. They call it Galaxy Tab, which bears no resemblance to "iPad" whatsoever. Try it out yourself. Go to a store that has both the Samsung tablet and the Apple tablet, try both, and come back and tell me that they look similar. They don't! As for whoever modded my original parent post "Troll" - you Apple freaks are the worst fanboys of all. Samsung's tablet is technically superior to iPad 2. Pointing that out - that Apple doesn't have the best device on the market - is stating the facts, not trolling.But go on. Keep living in your twisted little fanboy world where Apple is the greatest computer company on the planet, and its products are the only ones that are great or groundbreaking. You Apple fanboys will grow older and wiser someday, and look back and wonder precisely what it was that was so "amazing" about Apple's products.

Re:I thought EU was anti-troll

[NIK282000]

Tablet nothing, they invented the rectangular computing device. No computing device from here on may be rectangular in shape for that shape is owned by Apple.

Re:When defending yourself...

[scot4875]

Except that Apple chose to ignore licensing the 3G F/RAND patents for the first several years of the existence of the iPhone, and is now complaining to the courts that they should just be able to pay the same fees that everyone else gets.

So, if this plays out in Apple's favor, the logical end result is that it's the wiser thing for everybody to NEVER license F/RAND patents; worst case for them is that years down the road they might get sued and have to pay the same thing they would have paid anyway, best case is that nobody notices/bothers to take them to court and they get away with it without paying anything.

--Jeremy

Re:But they do...

[Solandri]

Anyone that has good working vision can see that Samsung, more or less, copies Apple's designs wholesale. They might not be complete replicas of their products, but the "nods" they include in their designs are pretty obvious.

Take a look at this Samsung product. Obviously a rip-off of the iPad, right? Except Samsung released it in 2006, four years before the iPad.

There are certain basic concepts which recur over and over in product designs. Black looks good, certain things look better flat rather than curved, make the flat thing shiny for bonus points, a border around the main area of focus (screen/photo) helps isolate it from the background, a chrome/metal trim along the edge makes a good highlight. The only thing that's changed is that suddenly Apple is claiming that they own these basic age-old design concepts and nobody else is allowed to use them in certain types of new products.