Dutch court rejects Apple's pleas for ban on Galaxy Tab

Following an earlier loss in its campaign to ban its competitor's products in the Netherlands, Samsung's primary distribution centre in Europe, Apple appealed (no pun intended) to The Hague court to have that ruling overturned and a sales injunction applied.

Today's ruling is the final word on that particular battle and the Galaxy Tab 10.1 can continue to be legally sold in the netherlands. In response to the decision, Samsung's Marketing Manager, Geert Mol stated "We are very pleased. This proves that the Galaxy Tab 10.1 is distinctive and supports what we have always said."

The legal action was initiated under legislation that allows for a corporation to register something called a “community design” which broadly interpreted means that signature elements of a product's look and feel can be protected from imitation by another entity attempting to trade on the similarities. Today's decision is an outright rejection of Apple's claims that the Korean phone maker was in breach of said community design.

The court took the view that the 2004 community design cues were sufficiently unrelated to the Tab's own characteristics as to make Apple's claim clearly in error. They further stated that the legislation under which Apple made its challenge made no allowance for comparison to Apple's 2010 iPad since the original registered design was the foundation of any such claim, and the iPad was in itself simply derivative of the original community design.

This ruling may yet be relevant to legal actions in other European jurisdictions, although such is not a given. Although the European Union allows for legal decisions to be applied across all member states, this is not always the case and each nation state is entitled to invoke its own legal ruling despite the decision being accepted in concert by other countries.

It's believed that this appeal has resulted in Samsung being awarded costs in the region of 207,000 Euros from litigant Apple, mere bagatelle for the Cupertino based tech colossus. Despite this latest loss, it's widely expected that it will not dampen Apple's enthusiasm for their newly embraced marketing by litigation programme. More to come, be assured.

Source: Nu.nl

Edit: Corrected error of fact in para 2, availability for sale