Score a huge, huge win for Apple in its IP fight with Samsung: a Dutch court has just granted Apple a preliminary injunction preventing the Samsung Galaxy series of smartphones from being sold in Europe, effective on October 13th.
This injunction follows a similar injunction made by a German court against the sales of the Galaxy Tab 10,1. That injunction was overturned after it was discovered that the German court had overstepped its own authority in banning Samsung’s tablet in the EU.
According to FOSS Patents, Samsung could still get around the ban, since it only prevents three different Samsung subsidiaries registered in the Netherlands from selling the Galaxy S in the EU. Samsung’s Korea office could distribute the Galaxy S directly in Europe.
That’s unlikely, though. Samsung Korea just doesn’t have the infrastructure in place to move the Galaxy S into Europe without going through the Netherlands.
Big win for Apple, if this injunction doesn’t get tossed out like the German one. It also means that Samsung better make the next couple months count as far as Galaxy sales are concerned.
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
26 responses to “Apple Granted EU Wide Ban On All Of Samsung’s Galaxy S Series iPhone Knockoffs”
I just p a i d $21.87 for an i P a d 2-64GB and my boyfriend loves his Panasonîc Lumîx GF 1 Camera that we got for $38.76 there arriving tomorrow by UPS.I will never pay such expensive retail prices in stores again. Especially when I also sold a 40 inch LED TV to my boss for $657 which only cost me $62.81 to buy.
Here is the website we use to get it all from, http://BídsFírst.Com
Since the court’s argumentation is based on the violation of apple’s ‘method of scrolling’ and ‘unlocking mobile devices’ patents, I wonder if the ban shouldn’t be for all android devices. Hehe ;)
maybe 90% of all mobile devices?
All hail the one and only iPhone!!
As if Samsung won’t settle? They would be idiots not to do so if Apple wins. I think Apple may have it’s hands full if Google is allowed to buy Motorola though. Honestly these patent battles are dumb and only help increase prices for the consumer as they just past the cost of all their legal battles on to us.
yeah, right. And you can get nicely ripped off. I’ve just been…
bid for an iphone 4 for about $350 (450 bids) and i always got overbid no matter what. same story with an ipad 2, the only thing is i only bade for that for about $100. And the most annoying thing is that after about 10 bids from when i stopped bidding, some lucky basterd won the thing for about $10… so stop spamming here pls…(i daresay that you are just an agent for the site…) I lost about $450 and got nothing for my money, so scr*w you bidrivals…
Or Samsung updates the software to use left/right arrow buttons or something (e.g., motion based scrolling) instead of the ‘method of scrolling’ SOFTWARE PATENT (that shouldn’t be legal in the EU anyway) before that date.
it is a spam.. this idiot posts the same thing in every single article here.. I wonder why they don’t stop stupid spam in this site..
I just p a i d $21.87 for an i P a d 2-64GB and my boyfriend loves his Panasonîc Lumîx GF 1 Camera that we got for $38.76 there arriving tomorrow by UPS.I will never pay such expensive retail prices in stores again. Especially when I also sold a 40 inch LED TV to my boss for $657 which only cost me $62.81 to buy.
Here is the website we use to get it all from, http://BídsFírst.Com
KABOOM! It’s easy to do a ‘Nelson HA HA’ but i’ll be glad when all the intergalactic patent crap is over. Apple and Samsung should cut the crap, sit down and sort all this bad blood out.
People are trying, but they pop up almost immediately after deletion. It’s a lot of work but people are trying.
Surely they’ll just update the gallery app? I mean they’ve got until October 13 – Google could push an update out through the Market like they’ve been doing for gmail and the like.
I’m an iPad and iPhone user…but how could this be “huge win” for Apple?
Out of 10 claims from Apple, they’ve got only one.
And even that one is not design related…rather OS related….all sammy needs to do is change their gallery(maybe just bring it back to Froyo version).
Now Apple can no longer ask the rights on their design IP’s due to the court decision.
And Apple needs to fight against to Sammy’s claims which are technical IP’s…which is completely different story and can be really tough for Apple.
To bad the judge mostly disagrees.
The scrolling was because it looked like the useless but pretty CoverFlow. To get more detailed (the “bounce” after you hit the beginning or end of a list of photos”)
The slide to unlock was thrown out because a phone called the Neonode N1m in 2005 had it.
The icon layout looked to much like 5 or 6 year old Nokia phones.
On the iPad design claims: Regarding the design related stuff – the Community Designs – of the iPad, the judge threw it all out, citing loads of prior art (like the Compaq TC1x00). In addition, the judge stated that only the front of the device shows some resemblance, while everything else is entirely different. The Kinght Ridder is also cited as relevant prior art – the judge threw out Apple’s defense that the product never made it to market. To round it out, the judge also mentioned ‘form-follows-function’ several times. Most interesting note: the judge specifically mentions that by having such a minimalist design, the iPad basically makes itself less viable for design protection.
As for the outside design of the Galaxy S phones: Regarding the design of the Galaxy smartphones, the judge again cites numerous cases of prior ‘art’, including the LG Prada. The judge threw out all of Apple’s claims here. Finally, the Android GUI – the Nokia 7710 is cited numerous times as prior art.
good write-up sir.