Apple's attempt to banish the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1N tablet in Germany hit a wall when a court denied its motion for a preliminary sales ban.
Samsung ratcheted up another victory in
its legal battles with Apple over patent violations, when a German court
refused to grant Apple a preliminary sales ban on the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1N
tablet and Galaxy Nexus smartphone.
Apple can perhaps take consolation in
the fact that, although the Munich Regional Court rejected its notion for the
Galaxy Tab 10.1N, a Dusseldorf appeals court declined to overturn a ruling that
bars Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1 from sale in Germany. Samsung developed the
Galaxy Tab 10.1N to sidestep that ban on the original tablet.
According to Bloomberg, the patent contested
before the Munich Regional Court concerns "technology that shows users when
they reach the scrolling limit of the page." It is registered with the European
Patent Office.
"This is a patent that a court can
easily understand, as opposed to one raising complicated technical issues (which
is what many patents related to wireless telecommunications standards do),"
patent expert Florian Mueller wrote in
a Feb. 1 posting on his FOSS Patents blog. "But
such patents are also at a particularly high risk of being invalid, or of being
considered likely to be invalid, which is what apparently happened here."
This is Apple's second legal foray in
Germany against the Galaxy Nexus, he added.
Over the past few months, Apple has
failed to have Samsung's Galaxy tablets and smartphones banned in the United
States. Other courtroom battles continue all over the world, including Europe
and Asia. Although Apple's iPad and iPhone claim a considerable portion of the
tablet market, the devices are facing down an ever-broadening collection of
rival Android devices from various manufacturers.
Before his death, Apple co-founder
Steve Jobs called Google Android a "stolen product" and threatened to engage in
"thermonuclear war" against it. His ire was so great that, in a meeting with
former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, he reportedly refused to even consider any sort
of Android-related payout. "I don't want your money," he said, according to
Walter Isaacson's recent biography. "If you offer me $5 billion, I won't want
it. I've got plenty of money. I want you to stop using our ideas in Android,
that's all I want."
Months after his passing, Apple
continues that mission-but as the German courts demonstrate, the battle against
Android manufacturers is capable of producing a mix of victory and defeat.
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