Samsung Drops European Injunction Requests Against Apple

An anonymous reader writes with this IDG News report: "Samsung dropped all claims pending in European courts in which it asserted patents that are essential for mobile communication devices to prevent the sales of Apple products in Europe. The injunction requests against Apple, which aimed to get courts to impose sales bans on infringing products, were withdrawn in the U.K., France, the Netherlands, Germany and Italy. Samsung only withdrew the injunctions requests — other litigation against Apple in Europe continues, Anne ter Braak, a spokeswoman for Samsung in the Netherlands, said in an email on Tuesday. While Samsung said it withdrew its claims in the interest of protecting consumer choice, it could have to do with a European antitrust investigation."

Comments

Perhaps legal costs are starting to bite

[SuperKendall]

You have to think, with the relative lack of victory by any of the phone makers (Apple, Samsung, Motorola, Google) in the court of law, that at some point the legal bill would come due and companies would start coming to their senses about fighting in the courts vs. the market.

Samsung is already doing really well in the market as it is, so why should they bother to try and limit what other devices companies can sell? The same thing goes for Apple.

With any luck in 2013 we'll see all of the lawsuits subside as sanity takes hold.

Re:Perhaps legal costs are starting to bite

[CrimsonAvenger]

Samsung is already doing really well in the market as it is, so why should they bother to try and limit what other devices companies can sell?

Given that Samsung asked for this injunction after Apple tried for a similar injunction in the USA (which, conveniently enough, was just denied), I would expect that this was just a tit-for-tat maneuver to convince Apple that the stakes were getting a bit high.

So now that Apple no longer has the injunction option in the USA, dropping the European one by Samsung just makes sense.

Re:Who cares

[Rennt]

Because it's not really Apple or Samsung that are suffering. It's us. The consumers who are literally paying for the benefit of stagnation and lack of choice.

Apple and Samsung like the weather in Hell just fine.

Re:Who cares

[Cerium]

Ugh. Enough of this backwards justification for this crap.

Do a few minutes of 5th-grader-level research and you'll find that there were more than a few phones/pdas/whatever that had touch screens with grids of icons before the iPhone existed. The tech simply wasn't cheap (or cool) enough yet. Apple was simple in the right place at the right time.

Your memory of how things got to where we are now is fuzzy at best. :/

Re:Who cares

[Cerium]

Okay, so let's just pretend for a second that I didn't specify any other device types or reasons in my very short example. Let's also ignore the mental acrobatics you performed to disregard the remainder of that chunklet of information I posted in a seemingly feeble attempt at steering the clearly biased back toward the gray area within which the rest of us live.

Let's pretend all of that. Even still, you're saying that the iPhone was a technological evolution of devices that were not only already in existence, but established enough that there were known workarounds for the seemingly terrible user experience.

Even if that were exactly the case, to hold Apple so highly for their "accomplishments" that you feel they're justified in suing everyone else for "stealing" mind-numbingly obvious IP is sociopathic at best.

Look, If you guys enjoy living within the walled garden of Apple, great. I'm happy for you. However, to think they somehow developed everything in a vacuum and everything to come after is a mindless copy... Jesus Christ, man.