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What's next for Samsung after Galaxy Tab blow
KOREAN POWERHOUSE Samsung suffered a major blow on Tuesday when a German court ruled it could no longer sell its Galaxy Tab 10.1-inch tablet across Europe, and the firm is clearly keeping a low profile now as its lawyers and executives decide on its next best move.
The German court's preliminary injunction prevents Samsung from selling the 10.1-inch tablet model across the European Union. This is in response to an Apple complaint that Samsung was infringing several of its patents and copying the design of its successful Ipad tablet with the Tab. The Netherlands is the only EU country exempt from the ruling, as Apple has filed a separate complaint there.
The injunction clearly came out of the blue for Samsung. According to Reuters, Samsung complained that it was given no notice over the injunction, and was not given a chance to present any evidence.
However, Samsung then issued a watered-down version of the statement, saying, "Samsung is disappointed with the court's decision and we intend to act immediately to defend our intellectual property rights through the ongoing legal proceedings in Germany and will continue to actively defend these rights throughout the world.
"We will take all necessary measures to ensure Samsung's innovative mobile communications devices are available to customers in Europe and around the world."
Samsung's change of heart over the lack of notice it received on the ruling could have been down to its lawyers realising that the court's actions were valid.
According to Florian Mueller, there is no obligation to hear evidence from or inform the accused party before issuing a preliminary injunction against them.
"A preliminary injunction is ordered only if the court believes you're likely to prevail in the main proceeding," Meuller noted. "But that doesn't necessarily mean that you will."
Apple has taken on more risk by going down this route. If the cappuccino company ends up losing the case, it will be liable for damages and will have to cover for any lost Galaxy Tab sales.
This is unlikely to leave Apple with too many sleepless nights, however. Samsung has been very cagey over the number of Tabs sold, leaving us to assume that it's not exactly approaching Ipad-like sales figures yet. According to the most recent Apple financials, the firm has sold a whopping 14 million Ipads this year alone.
In comparison, Samsung was forced to backtrack on claims it made in January that it had sold two million of its 7-inch Tab models since their launch in the fourth quarter last year, admitting this was the number of units shipped to retailers, not sold to customers. One Samsung executive said at the time that actual Galaxy Tab sales were quite small. Oh, and there's also the huge wad of cash Apple is sitting on as a guarantee if the decision ends up going Samsung's way. µ
Tags: Hardware
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Apple believes that it's consumers are quite dumb that they can't tell the difference between an apple and samsung product.
That's the sole purpose of this move by apple.
I see where your going with all of the comparisons.... BUT
"We don't see 3M and Scotch fighting over tape do we? It's all sticky on one side. 3/4" wide and comes in 25m rolls.
The dispensers look pretty much the same as well."
Ummm.. Scotch is a brand owned by 3M so it doesn't make much sense to fight themselves... Rule #1 about fight club.....
Incidentally, I though that there was no global EU patent yet, and that the individual countries in the EU didn't have the US style insane patent system? Do we now not even apply our own laws anymore and just have courts rule using imaginary laws the US makes up for us?
Well that's no surprise actually...
I already don't buy apple products, but I don't think that people that do will for even a nanosecond consider stopping because of this.
In fact I think that if steve came round the average apple user's home and broke their spine and spat in their face they'd not stop buying his products.
If mere hard work were sufficient for you to proclaim that the world owes you a living, then the highest-paid profession in the world would be the toilet-cleaners.
grow up love
hexx writes "Just imagine following scenario."
What? The scenario where you have a clue?
Copying images and republishing them is absolutely not the same as what is alleged to be going on here. And no-one should have a monopoly on "shiny squares", anyway, which is what this amounts to.
On to the next memo, fanboy!
Just imagine following scenario.
You're a photographer. You invested a lot of money to your body, lenses, strobes, computer, software and a lot of time studying photography.
Now let's say you take few really nice photographs. You upload them to your preferred online service (Flickr for example).
Now I come, copy all your photos and put them on my website which features also other's great shots. I have few banners on the site and because of the beautiful photographs I have 100s of 1000s unique visits a day - and I'm getting rich from this revenue.
It cost me nothing, I didn't need to invest in cameras, computer, education...
How would you like it as a photographer?
I guess you would not.
And this is the same with the Galaxy line of Samsung products, they all look like Apple's product, you can't argue that.
Look at HTC's phones, do they look like iPhones? No, they don't, HTC designs very neat and very well built phones.
What about Samsung? Nope, they copy and copy a lot.
I agree, this is just ugly behavior on Apple's part. I personally don't want to help out a company who acts like this.
Apple seems to have managed to jump right across the "anticompetitive" line, right to "antisocial".
It is difficult to look at this kind of predatory behavior as anything short of sociopathic. They are finding any excuse and using every underhanded trick to prevent citizens of the EU (and anywhere else on the planet they can) from being able to make a choice in the marketplace. Then they try and market their products for "social networking" use. Go figure.
This amounts to the worst advertising they could have. People don't "forget" this kind of injustice (or "abuse of the justice system"). Just look what happened to Microsoft, for pulling similar anticompetitive stunts (and bribing people, as in the ISO debacle).
War -- legal or physical -- is nothing that people want to be associated with.
OK. Now they need to ban the sale of all but one brand of beer.. They all have similar ingredients and come in bottles where the only way to tell the products apart is by the label. Same thing with a lot of other products. TVs, Chips, EVERYTHING where one company competes with another and the packaging is similar to the judge's preferred brand. Who's going to win the fight over printer paper? It's all 8.5"x11" and white.
Apple vs Samsung? Yes the products LOOK similar. Just like a Dell notebook looks a lot like ALL THE OTHERS. Relative size and shape is what makes the iPad and Galaxy Tab. TABLETS! DUH!
So either the judge is like super undereducated and had no business even looking at this case.. OR Conspiracy theory time. Somebody handed the fool a rather nice wad of cash when noone was looking.
Apple holds patent on their particular case size shape, how thick the material is, and a number of other distinguishing factors. I don't think they hold patent on any of the other bits in the thing except maybe the main board.
Just like when a metal foundry kicks out a #6 bolt. It'll look almost just like the competitors product and do the same job. BUT there's always a slight difference.
We don't see 3M and Scotch fighting over tape do we? It's all sticky on one side. 3/4" wide and comes in 25m rolls.
The dispensers look pretty much the same as well.
Might be Germany needs to FIRE this fool judge they have there.
The Samsung 10.1 Tab was supposed to ship around the time the iPad 2 launched but Samsung pulled it for re-design. This action presumably, in response to the iPad 2!
They released the 7" it did so bad that they reckoned they had to copy the design of the iPad even more to make itnew Tab sell. However they sailed a bit to close to the wind , and got nailed.
There are loads of tablet designs coming out of china etc. But they all tend to stick to the basic android design and come wiwht lots of extra sockets.
The rpoblem is loads of people want an iPad but without the wallet kicking it administers
After first seeing this news (elsewhere, unfortunately) I Googled both units to compare. Other than being rectangular, they do not look the same and they obviously have completely different operating systems (walled garden vs. open) including differing functionality as a result, i.e, not a direct copy. This follows the same idiotic pattern of crApple sueing Samsung and others for phones that have rounded corners, etc., etc, etc, ad nauseum.
These days I just think back to the Apple 1984 Orwellian commercial. It indeed was not only prophetic but extremely ironic because Steve Jobs has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that he, himself, always was and is the real Big Brother.