Information Madness

A court has ordered in Germany that Samsung cannot sell its latest Galaxy Tab for the reason that its design resembles Apple’s iPad 2 very closely. The ruling has come by the Dusseldorf State Court and it applies to the direct sales. This means that the distributors could be smart enough to buy the Tablet Galaxy Tab 10.1 from abroad and can resell them in Germany.

Apple had recently taken Samsung to court with the argument that the design is a close copy of its iPad 2. Samsung wants to appeal against this ruling with the premise that the ruling limits the consumer choice in Germany severely.

The Court ruled in favour of Apple a couple of weeks back forcing Samsung to withdraw its tablet from the European market and Samsung had to abide by the ruling. Later on, it became clear that the injunction applied to sales in Germany only, a place where the tablet had not yet been launched. Samsung are putting up an argument that by forcing an injunction on the generic design, the ruling is putting pressure and affecting design innovation and progress in the industry.

The Judge in the Dusseldorf Court, Frau Johanna Brueckner-Hofmann, has asserted that Samsung has not kept the required minimum distance in its designing and has overstepped the patent copyright restrictions. Apple had patented its design and protected it in 2004 itself. The Court cited examples that tablets from Toshiba, Acer and Asus have kept a clearly different design

Apple and Samsung are deeply involved in a series of legal battles in countries all over the world over allegations of technology plagiarism.