“Apple Inc. failed to get a preliminary ban on sales of Samsung Electronics Co.’s Galaxy 10.1N and Galaxy Nexus mobile phone from a German court,” Karin Matussek reports for Bloomberg.
“The Munich Regional Court rejected the motion today, in a case where Apple invoked a patent granted last year protecting technology related to touch screens for tablets and smartphones,” Matussek reports. “‘Samsung has shown that it is more likely than not that the patent will be revoked because of a technology that was already on the market before the intellectual property had been filed for protection,’ Presiding Judge Andreas Mueller said when delivering the ruling.”
“The patent at issue today protects technology that shows users when they reach the scrolling limit of a page,” Matussek reports. “The decision relied on the likelihood that Samsung could get the patent revoked at the European patent Office, which had granted the intellectual-property protection. Peter Chrocziel, an Apple lawyer, argued at the hearing that the technology Samsung claimed was known before the iPad maker’s patent was filed didn’t contain the same solution because it didn’t provide the same experience for the user.”
Matussek reports, “The decision comes a day after a Dusseldorf appeals court upheld Apple’s request to ban sales of the Galaxy Tab 10.1, the predecessor model. Samsung began selling the Galaxy Tab 10.1N, a revised version, in Germany to get around the ban. A lower Dusseldorf court is scheduled to rule next week on a separate case Apple filed over the Galaxy 10.1N. Samsung lost two patent rulings against its rival in a Mannheim court last month.”
Read more in the full article here.
Florian Mueller reports for FOSS Patents, “Preliminary injunctions are granted at the end of fast-track proceedings, in Germany frequently within days of the filing of a complaint. Courts don’t have time to go into intricate patent claims within that framework. 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.”
“I’ve repeatedly criticized both Apple and Samsung for seeking preliminary injunctions against each other,” Mueller writes. “While I can understand that time is of the essence in such a dispute (the first one to have major leverage will likely get a settlement on much more favorable terms than otherwise) and while I’m furthermore aware of the competitive situation between the world’s top two mobile device makers, most of those bids have so far either failed. Those that succeeded have partly been overturned (such as in Australia) or designed around (such as in Germany).”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
