Samsung tried to get it overturned, but the preliminary injunction against its Galaxy Tab tablet in the US will be enforced after all, despite different rulings in other parts of the world. District Judge Lucy Koh issued an injunction, back in
late June, against the Samsung Galaxy Tab tablet, which essentially forbids its sale in the United States.
Naturally, the company wasn't about to take it lying down, so it turned to the US appeals court, hoping it wouldn't have to change the looks.
Unfortunately, its attempts to overturn the ruling was denied. Also, the court refused to speed up the appeal process, which means that Samsung has to wait until July 30 at the very earliest before it can be heard again.
"Samsung may of course significantly self-expedite the case by filing its own brief early. Samsung, however, has not shown that the time for Apple to file its brief should be shortened," the court said in its ruling, according to
The Register.
Apple is no doubt ecstatic about the outcome, bizarre as it is. We call it bizarre because of the grounds on which the ban was granted in the first place.
The patent which Apple managed to use in the banning of the Samsung Galaxy Tab is "the ornamental design for an electronic device," which describes what a tablet looks like.
We won't say (again) how strange it is that someone is allowed to claim ownership of what is essentially an aesthetic concept that was used, by others, before Apple's iPad even came out. That's for the USPTO to sort out.
Instead, we'll draw attention to the fact that the very same patent
was ruled to not have been infringed by Samsung's Galaxy Tab in a different part of the world: The United Kingdom.
Remarks of Tab not being as “cool” as iPad aside, there is another matter: the same court
has ordered Apple to publicly admit, advertise even, that the Galaxy Tab is not a copy, and keep doing so for at least six months. It's the closest thing to a public apology we can think of.
Apple might still get out of it but, if it does not, this patent war will reach new levels of ridiculous. Apple will basically declare, in official capacity, that Galaxy Tab does not infringe its IP, while declaring, in official capacity, that Galaxy Tab
does infringe its IP, only in a different part of the world.
We'll give this mess this much: it gave the term “cognitive dissonance” a whole new meaning.
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