The same Dusseldorf court that enforced the sales ban on Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Germany has rejected Apple's bid to have its successor, the 10.1N, banned in the German market. The presiding judge has found in Samsung's favour that the Germany-specific model doesn't infringe on Apple's design patents and Samsung will continue to sell the 10.1N in the country.
While the final ruling will have to wait until February 9th, the decision has effectively been made and Apple has lost its latest attempt at marketing by litigation, another high profile setback for the Cupertino based consumer electronics giant. However, Apple has ongoing court cases in other countries besides Germany, and this latest reversal is unlikely to dampen the company's enthusiasm for suing its competitors out of markets across the globe.
Recently Apple succeeded in having the US ITC impose a ban on certain HTC handset sales in the country, a rather thin victory as it transpires with HTC announcing yesterday that there is already a workaround for the alleged patent infringing processes flagged by the ITC. The ban wouldn't be applied until April and would also only apply to new imports at that time, so is unlikely to have any effect on HTC at all.
Apple is in turn being sued by HTC, Samsung, Motorola and others in various world courts, some of which are considered likely to enforce bans on the iGadgets targeted by those court cases.
Source: Bloomberg
No comments:
Post a Comment