Apple has won a preliminary injunction against rival tablet-maker Samsung in a German court, banning the sale of the Korean giant’s popular Galaxy Tab 10.1 there. The news comes hard on the heels of a similar suit from Apple in Australia, which has forced the delay of the Tab launch Down Under.
Apple filed the complaint under the EU's "community design" provision, claiming that Samsung has merely copied the iPad’s design. Under EU provisions, the ban could be extended from Germany throughout the Eurozone, though Apple would likely need to make additional registrations on a country-by-country basis. The Cupertino-based juggernaut already has a prior suit going in the Netherlands.
Samsung can appeal the injunction and most certainly will, but it will take at least a month to receive a hearing.
It’s all part of an ongoing issue: In April Apple sued Samsung in a general patent dispute, saying the Galaxy tablet and smartphones are “slavish" copies of Apple’s iconic industrial design and infringe on a rash of Apple patents. Samsung, of course, would beg to differ, and countersued (it dropped its infringement suit last week). It has also asked the International Trade Commission to block sales of Apple devices because of patent infringements.
Apple has meanwhile pursued a country-by-country lawsuit strategy (South Korea, Japan, Australia, the Netherlands, German, the U.S., etc.) which seems to be paying off at times (Australia, Germany) in terms of effectively delaying Tab launches. Given the obvious design differences between the two tablets, it has led many commentators to wonder if this “competition by litigation," to quote BetaNews, is fair competition at all.
Some of the differences: The Galaxy rear camera is in the middle of the landscape portion of the device, which is geared toward horizontal use; the back is made of plastic, not the iPad’s smooth aluminum; there’s no physical “home" button on the Tab; the cameras differ; the displays differ; the processors differ; and so on.
However, the grievances are actually much more granular, and seem to cover what some would consider generic tablet or smartphone-like behavior, like scrolling. Apple’s complaint also covers “trade dress" concerns, like the Tab product packaging – the very box is at issue. TechDirt listed the alleged infringements here back in April.
Ironically, Samsung one of the biggest component suppliers to Apple — Apple spends $8.5 billion with the manufacturer for a range of components, including the A4 and A5 processors that power the iPhone and iPad.
With Android steadily taking market share, however, and the Galaxy Tab 10.1 widely seen as the best of the Android tablet crop to date, “we believe the company will undertake every possible step to safeguard its dominant position in the smartphone and tablet market, including further lawsuits against major competitors such as Samsung," noted research firm Zacks Equity, in a blog. “However, the outcome remains uncertain."
Zacks also noted that Apple remains heavily dependent on iPhone sales, which accounted for 50 percent of second quarter sales at the company. In terms of smartphone shipments, Android now has 48 percent of global market share, according to a new report from Canalys. That’s based on estimates from the second quarter of 2011, which also shows Android to be tops among shipments to 35 of the 56 countries tracked by the analyst firm. Google’s operating system is up a mind-boggling 379 percent over one year ago to nearly 52 million shipments, the study says.
