Australian Court Blocks Sales of Samsung Galaxy Tablet

jimboh2k writes "Apple has succeeded in blocking the sale of Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet in Australia until a final hearing can be heard in the case down under. The judgment on Thursday could effectively kill chances of the tablet ever launching properly in Australia after Samsung claimed further delays to the product would threaten hopes of gaining traction."

Re:This may not be so good for Apple...

[beelsebob]

Uhh, there's no precedent set here... It's the norm that if you're found to violate a patent that an injunction is given. Apple wouldn't argue that in injunction shouldn't block the iPhone 4S because that would be mean... they would argue that an injunction shouldn't block the iPhone 4S because they already licensed samsung's patents when they took out a RAND license on the 3G patent pool.

Gov't - because nothing is too small to screw with

[roman_mir]

All of these patent laws and copyright laws - all they do is promote innovation and competition, don't they?

Judgement could be used to ban ANY android device

[dell623]

The judgement is based on broad patents that would be violated by any Android touchscreen based phone or tablet in Australia [wordpress.com] This goes way beyond the German ruling as it is not based on a design patent. Apple can now ask for a ban on any android device in Australia and it will most likely be granted. You can't blame Samsung for asserting FRAND patents, this ruling has equal anti trust/monopoly implications as it grants Apple a monopoly on tablet devices in Australia and could be used to do the same with smartphones. Apple have refused to license these patents. Software patents are now hurting consumers directly, beyond the tax we have been paying on devices that goes to play patent trolls and patent lawyers e.g. the $5-10 on every android device that goes to Microsoft. Now they are being used to kill consumer choice.

Nice rant

[SmallFurryCreature]

Small detail... this has nothing to do with Android. Apple has a beef with the design of the physical phone, the packaging, the cabling AND Samsungs skin for Android. In this suit at least, they got no complaint against Android itself.

I don't care who just died

[AbRASiON]

This company needs to be knocked off their perch. ESPECIALLY as Australian people have a penchant for strongly following the rules of tall poppy syndrome.
Anecdotal comment: Out of the 50 staff I work with in my team in the office, we have had the following phone purchases in the past 12 months

1x iphone 4
5x galaxy S2
1x galaxy 1 series
3x HTC Android phones
2x Acer Android phones (surprisingly good, Liquid Metal phone - 120$ AUD outright!)
1xAsus Transformer
0xipads

Also of note, 2 of those Android purchases were directly moving FROM iphones to Android. If I increase that threshold to 18 months*, I can add another iphone 4.
The sentiment in the office and amongst all the nerds I know except 2 die hards is that "Apple is evil" and generally to be avoided. It's basically 'not cool' to own an iphone at the moment, at least with the people I speak with. (If you can't tell, I'm one of the converts)

I have in the past 12 months though, recommended an iphone for someone surprisingly. A girl who had an iphone 3gs she dropped it and shattered it, she's not tech savvy and already has an iphone with itunes backup, it would be silly to push my 'Android agenda' on the girl when clearly an iphone would suit here.
Flame comment begin: and to be genuinely honest, I see the iphone as the 'dumbest' of the smartphones, it's perfect for people like her because it's like the old Nokia 6110 of smartphones, simple and basic. You can't do much but you can't break much either. (Yes I genuinely believe that and I owned 3 of the things)

* and the guy who got his iphone 18 months ago is envious of everyones Galaxy S2, he's switching to Android at the end of his 24 month contract.

"I never heard of him before today" - no shit

[Kupfernigk]

Well, that's an admission. Since Ritchie was one of the pioneers of what has evolved to be the technology that powers most servers and almost all mobile devices, you could argue that he is of much more relevance to this article than your post. After all, it is about two companies fighting over technologies for which he was one of the major founders.

The delay is not a bad thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

The delay is a good thing. Since we are all already aware of what has happened, this delay will give foolish people lots of time to post their faux-sincere "condolences" at shitholes like Hacker News, reddit and Google+. There'll be many thousands of useless one-line "My condolences to his family" and "RIP dmr" comments.

By the time Slashdot gets around to posting this news, the majority will hopefully have that crap out of their system, and we can remember him and the impact he made with useful, insightful, detailed comments, rather than single-line platitudes.

Re:This may not be so good for Apple...

[JasterBobaMereel]

Not losing ... Apple are winning an injunction which as long as they supply a valid looking case is automatic, this does not mean the actual case will stand up in court later ...Apple will have to prove that Samsung were trying to steal market share by copying

By the way Samsung do make money from Apple .... the iPad screen, processor, memory etc .etc is made by .... Samsung which is why Samsung hold patents on most of the technology, they designed it ...

Apple designed the iPad, but other people make it from mostly, off the shelf parts, most of them are made by Samsung, so unsurprisingly the Samsung Tab is made from mostly the same parts ... The only thing unique about the iPad is the physical shape and the desktop layout (which are protected with Design patents)

Re:Madness

[msobkow]

Until there's a way to put a corporation in jail, they should not have the same rights as people.