Kevin Bostic
A Dutch court handed Apple its fourth patent defeat in a year on Wednesday, finding that the rounded corners of Samsung's Galaxy Tab products do not infringe on Apple's registered design features.
The ruling, handed down by a district court in The Hague, covers the Galaxy Tab 10.1, Galaxy Tab 8.9, and Galaxy Tab 7.7.
Apple had argued in court that the devices violated its rounded edge design patent, a design feature widely adopted among tablet manufacturers in the wake of the iPad's success. According to Reuters, however, the court sided with Samsung, and ruled the devices were not infringing on Apple's designs.
Samsung, in a statement, said that "Apple was not the first to design a tablet with a rectangular shape and rounded corners." The company went on to say that numerous examples of prior art exist for Apple's registered design features.
The decision is at least the fourth patent defeat for Apple in Dutch courts in the past year, following Samsung victories related to 3G patents and multitouch technology in June and October of last year, as well as a decision in January finding that the Galaxy Tab 10.1 did not violate other Apple design patents.
As is the case with Apple v. Samsung across much of the rest of the world, the Dutch courts have gone back and forth handing out victories between the two companies. Late last year, Apple won a ban on Galaxy products running Android 2.2.1 or later without Samsung's proprietary photo gallery software, due to their infringement on Apple's "rubber-banding" software patent. The two companies, mobile market leaders in terms of both profits and units sold, are locked in patent struggles across at least 10 countries.
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46 Comments
Are there tablets with square corners?
I would really love to see all this conclusive prior art specifically of pronounced FLAT-CIRCLE rounded corners. Of course there are numerous devices with varying amounts of curved finish on corners. But from a visual branding perspective, the slight blunting or smoothing or elliptical curving of an edge is not the same thing as Apple's very pronounced signature circle corners that they popularized consistently across their entire hardware (and software) style. I wish that distinction would be made when Samsung and others discuss prior art. And the fact that people seem to ignore that nuance just further explains how those same people kept producing/accepting such pathetic designs for so long before Apple came along.
Has Samsung paid the billions they owe Apple yet, after losing to a bona-fide jury decision?
Has Samsung paid the billions they owe Apple yet, after losing to a bona-fide jury decision?
The Jury in the US also said The Galaxy Tab did not infringe on design patents. The award was for patent on the Galaxy line of phones.
Has Samsung paid the billions they owe Apple yet, after losing to a bona-fide jury decision?
They don't owe billions. . . YET. The case isn't over, much less a final amount owed set by the court. Lots of judicial decisions still to be made. Then it's nearly guaranteed that both Apple and Samsung will appeal some of those court rulings as neither will be totally happy.