Sale of Samsung Galaxy Tab Blocked in the EU 412
bizwriter writes with a news piece in bnet about the continuing battle between Samsung and Apple. From the article: "In a stunning and painful decision for Samsung, Apple got a German court to issue a preliminary injunction against the Galaxy Tab. According to patent analyst and blogger Florian Mueller, that means Samsung cannot ... sell its tablet in the entire European Union, except for the Netherlands."
It's a preliminary injunction (Score:3, Interesting)
For instance, suppose I register a box with round corners. Now you show that the real reason for round corners is so that the box, designed to go in a pocket, will not put too much stress on the pocket material. It is a human factors improvement; it should not be usable as a design copyright.
I'm sure that Samsung will be actively pursuing any way of showing that Apple's tablet design follows naturally from engineering factors for a portable computer. Meanwhile, Apple had better hope its new manufacturing partners don't start to worry about which of their products it might go after.
Blocked in the EU, you say? (Score:5, Interesting)
It was only a couple days ago here on Slashdot I read several comments along the lines of "that sort of crap only happens in your American legal system, not in Europe". So one of two things must be true.
1) Apple has a legitimate case; or
2) European law has the same issues as American law.
European Linux fans need to try to figure out which one it is without having their heads explode.
Re:Dont feed the troll (Score:4, Interesting)
He has a history of saying controversial things to drive traffic to his weblog. He had a long running feud with PJ and the Groklaw community in general where his analysis into the various SCO cases was consistently shown to be total crap.
It's also very doubtful that he has any legal qualifications whatsoever. He's just an attention whore trying to scrape a living on Adsense revenue. He deserves pity, but not attention.
Re:Cant compete, but sue. (Score:5, Interesting)
If "Apple can't compete on price", why are iPads the same or lower price than "competing" tablets?
Re:Cant compete, but sue. (Score:3, Interesting)
Bullshit. Samsung from day one has done nothing but copy Apple's ecosystem. From icon design, peripherals, GUI interface (phones), etc.
Before Apple came into the field, everyone had 20+ years to come up with a phone / tablet design to shake the industry. Even with with the few players that gave up quickly, everyone else did NOTHING!
Now Apple comes in with their iPhone and iPad and SUDDENLY everyone's products now looks like an iPhone and iPad. That is no coincidence at all. When the iPhone was just an introduction back in 2007 before it shipped 6-months later, even Steve Jobs said they "And boy, did we patent it!". Why??? Because NO ONE ELSE had anything even remotely similar to it, and good for them!
What happened to designing your own stuff??? Even Samsung's CEO publicly admitted having to hold back their Galaxy Tab after the iPad2 introduction so that they could essentially copy its features.
And yet you fandroid-huggers continue to spin the story that Apple is the one at fault.
"Who cares if everyone is copying Apple's stuff. Apple should just keep innovating to stay ahead!" - Wrong! Apple can (and should) protect both its current IP and continue the same path of R&D that has made it hugely successful. This does not give copy-shops like Samsung an open-invitation to simply ride on the back of Apple's R&D.
Slashdot's Android fanboys are just delusional. It's no surprise that the Android OS itself is now in front of the gun barrel with patent and licensing violations, including Google's own internal messages that they knew Android's Java implementation was essentially stolen.
This is not bad for consumers. This is actually good for them because it will force Samsung to ACTUALLY COME UP WITH ITS OWN STUFF! Who knows? It might even be better!
Spin your way out of that.
Re:Cant compete, but sue. (Score:4, Interesting)
Where did you get that bit about the CEO of Samsung? It makes no sense since the majority of functionality found in the Galaxy Tab is just Android which isn't developed by Samsung and kind of refutes your whole point.
You seem very one-sided and willfully ignorant especially with your interpretation of the whole Android debacle. Did you forget the part about the Sun CEO of the time encouraging Google to use Java for free?
All in all it matters little, Samsung is big enough to fight this battle and it will shed further light on ridiculous patents that Apple has become famous for using as a shield. I don't blame Apple for that either, they certainly aren't alone in that strategy. The iPad2 was just a logical extension of the existing iPad with features that everyone screamed it should have had to begin with especially since there was no technical reason it didn't but a marketing and sales driven reason but that's just good business on Apple's part since so many people eat it up.
Samsung has had a great track record of being innovative in the technology sector. They came out with a way better initial offering on the Samsung Apps approach knowing full well Sony was doing the same thing and their product was vastly superior with Sony still trying to play catch up and failing miserably as Sony is only good at the high end.
Wrong, Apple shot first (Score:3, Interesting)
You're wrong, Apple started this whole mess waaaaay back in April by suing Samsung over Android phones that they claimed "looked like an iPhone." [slashdot.org]
It was only later that Samsung started filing suits against Apple. I mean, hell, your own link mentions that the battle has been ongoing!
Apple started this. Samsung just refused to take it lying down.
Re:Pathetic Apple (Score:5, Interesting)
This is an iPad design from 2004 on a TV show;
https://plus.google.com/100241261662852079434/posts/12kf2e2BGjn [google.com]