“At 8 PM local California time on Friday, Apple filed a motion for a U.S. preliminary injunction against Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1,” Florian Mueller reports for FOSS Patents. “The motion is based on a ruling by the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC), which came down four days earlier and sided with Apple on the question of whether an iPad-related design patent (U.S. Patent No. D504,889) is likely valid. It also comes only three calendar days before the two companies’ CEOs and chief lawyers will hold court-moderated settlement talks in San Francisco.”
“Apple’s motion is fairly likely to succeed. If and when it does, there will be formal U.S. bans in place against all three of the leading Android device makers,” Mueller reports. “Also on Friday, the ITC ordered a U.S. import ban against Motorola’s Android-based devices (to the extent those infringe a particular Microsoft patent), and in December, the U.S. trade agency also banned HTC’s products that infringe a particular Apple patent — as a result, two HTC product rollouts just got delayed.”
Mueller writes, “A U.S. preliminary injunction against the Galaxy Tab 10.1 won’t be devastating for Samsung’s business. It will basically be an embarrassment and it may have some temporary effects on the company’s related revenues. There will without a doubt be a redesigned Galaxy Tab 10.1, just like Samsung responded to a German injunction (over what is essentially the European equivalent (with minor differences) of the iPad design patent) with a modified product named Galaxy Tab 10.1N.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Banning the Galaxy Tab 10.1 is like banning the Edsel. Nobody’s buying the thing anyway. Meanwhile, Samsung (and Motorola, HTC, LG, etc.) continues selling iPhone wannabes unabated worldwide. The billions of dollars (hundreds of billions, likely) of damage done already via the wholesale and wide-ranging theft of Apple’s IP will be difficult, if not utterly impossible, for Apple to ever recoup. The genie’s out of the bottle and a bunch of lawyers wading through the molasses swamps of the world’s courts of “law” likely aren’t ever going to be able to stuff him all the way back in.
Now now it’s ok, dont give up just now. Its going to be ok…
Have you ever given consideration to the possibility that all these lawsuits and injunctions are but a prelude to a completely redesigned iPhone? Maybe Apple is smart… And laying legal groundwork against rapid and slavish copying.
You have a very good point here. It would be awesome to see Apple stick it to everyone else like that. and they deserve no less than to not be able to copy AAPL
ha ha samsung soooo screwed
While I enjoy many of MDN’s snarky takes as much as any fanboi, its attitude on Apple’s handling of Android simply seems infantile to me. The people – person? – who write these takes clearly doesn’t appreciate the legal challenges associated with enforcing patents, especially on a global basis. I don’t know whether this is due to a lack of maturity or intelligence; I do know it has become tiresome.
Every time I read one of MDN takes that is driven by a childish need for instant gratification, I think about the famous patent case, Kearns vs. Ford. Robert Kearns invented the intermittent wiper system in 1964. He tried to sell it to the auto companies, but they refused to buy it. However, by 1969, the feature was showing up in American cars. From 1978 to 1990 (that’s 12 years, MDN), Kearns pressed his case in the American courts before Ford settled; in 1992, Chrysler lost in court.
I am not saying it is right, but it is reality, that major patent cases take years. MDN, you need to grow up and learn to deal with it. Robert Kearns did, and he prevailed.
“The wheels of justice turn slowly.” Sometimes very slowly.
Both Ralph and BW are on the right track here. However, the trouble with long drawn-out court cases that apply to technology patents is that by the time the case is decided, the defendant has made billions and the products that the patent was filed against are deprecated. In fact, probably two generations of product evolution will have been introduced so that leaves the whole mess a footnote in history.
@ Ralph: I enjoyed your wiper system example.
Thanks, Jackson for the compliment. A bit more of the history that obliquely bears on your point: Between Ford and Chrysler, Kearns was awarded (or settled for) a little more than $40 million (against $10 million in legal costs). Given that these are early 1990 dollars, that was probably a fair amount for his invention. It is hard to say if it adequately rewarded him for his long wait for justice.
The patent litigation that Apple is pursuing against Android is made extraordinarily complicated by virtue of the fact that, at this stage of the game, it is hard to get directly at Google, its creator, since Google doesn’t directly profit from the any sale of Android. That means Apple had to take the circuitous route of first attacking the device makers – HTC, Samsung and Motorola. This strategy absolutely requires discipline and patience, two things which it doesn’t appear to me that MDN understands or appreciates.
Ultimately, I think Apple will create sufficient risk and cost associated with using Android that most of the manufacturers will abandon it, either for Windows Phone or for a home-brew solution. Of course, Motorola – should the acquisition by Google go through – will continue to use Android and, perhaps two or three years from now, we will see the final showdown between Apple and Google. By then, there should be sufficient legal precedents for Apple to prevail.
As for MDN absurd claim that, in the meantime, Apple will have been harmed to the tune of “hundreds of billions” of dollars, I will simply point out that the only Android-based manufacturer making any meaningful profit is Samsung, and it is a TINY FRACTION of Apple’s profits on iPhone and iPad. All the rest are basically rounding errors, or in the red.
In simple fact, billions of dollars in Android devices may get sold, but that doesn’t mean any money got made. These are sales that Apple neither wants or needs.
You’re welcome!
And another thanks for the further discourse above that further clarifies an extremely muddy and complex situation.
I seem to remember Samsung got smacked pretty hard for their “minor changes” phone that they made to get around the patent. Making a product that gets around only the letter of the law looks bad. It pretty much says you do want to copy some one’s stuff, you just don’t want to get caught. I think this is a trap Apple is setting for Samsung and I think they’re falling for it too often.
I see an Apple TV commercial. Scene opens up to a “line” of people. A person asks if they are Apple fanboys awaiting the new release of the next iDevice. The crowd of Samsung fanboys, if there is such a thing, says, “No. We’re waiting for Samsung’s to produce an original, non copied device that isn’t under injunction by a court deciding in Apple’s favor!”
Priceless!
Good!
Keep the bans coming.