Earlier this week, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh granted a preliminary injunction that would allow Apple to bar Samsung from selling its Galaxy Tab 10.1 in the United States while a full trial on Samsung's alleged design infringement is conducted.
Enforcement of the sales ban required that Apple post a $2.6 million bond from which damages to Samsung would be paid if Apple ultimately lost its infringement case, and FOSS Patents reports that Apple has indeed moved quickly to post the bond.
Apple didn't hesitate to post its $2.6 million bond to protect Samsung againt the possibility of a successful appeal, in which case the preliminary injunction would be found to have been improperly granted. [...]
On this basis, the injunction has taken effect and Samsung must abide by it. Otherwise Apple could ask the court to sanction Samsung for contempt.
Samsung has filed a request for a stay of the injunction while it appeals the decision, but for the time being Samsung is subject to the ban.
The ban only applies to the Galaxy Tab 10.1, and Samsung now offers several other tablet models that are not affected by the injunction, so it is unclear exactly how much of an economic effect the ban will have on Samsung. But the injunction does strengthen Apple's standing as it pursues this and other lawsuits against Samsung in courts around the world.
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Samsung truly has copied Apple really blatantly time and time again, undeniably leveraging Apple’s designers to prevent the time/expense/risk of doing their own work from scratch; and whether that’s legally significant or not (seemingly it is, sometimes) there are some links showing that. For starters:
http://photos.appleinsider.com/samsungvsapple.081911.jpg
http://dcurt.is/chromebox-samsung (very recent!)
http://www.idownloadblog.com/2011/09/29/apple-samsung-copycat-2/
Another thing to remember: look at all the other tablets that do NOT use Apple styling. Apple’s way is not the “only way” to design a tablet, or a charger, or a UI, or packaging, etc. etc.
And certainly others besides Samsung have been equally unoriginal. Win or lose, Apple can hardly sit back and make it easy to get away with. That would be a VERY stupid and dangerous precedent for Apple to set.
And most importantly for we users: Wouldn’t we like real choice in the market, and competition rather than lazy trend-riding? Wouldn’t we rather see Samsung be more completely original and innovative? What more-unique tablets have we missed out on because Samsung didn’t put more of their profits into original designs? (Example: would Microsoft’s Surface be as interesting if they’d gone Samsung’s route of “cloning Apple as closely as we can get away with?”)
People are saying whats the big deal? The big deal is that for a good portion of people, they don't know the difference. There are people who see that it looks like an ipad so it must be a samsung ipad. Some people just aren't as educated as the people who visit this forum, so those people are easily deceived by Samsung's obvious ripoff.
To put it in other terms, what if Hyundai (another Korean company) decided they were going to build a 90% ripoff of the Corvette. While we can all agree that for the most part all cars have 4 wheels, a windshield, door handles an engine etc, we can see that the designs that people can come up with for cars are endless, and therefore Chevrolet would have a valid lawsuit on their hands and Hyundai would probably loose and most people would think Chevy had the right to defend their brand and looks of their car. So then why do people love to hate on Apple when they set out to do just the same, defend what they spent their time, money and effort on.
It just doesn't make sense. Apple should defend what is theirs without people hating on them.
For this injunction, the only thing being considered is the Apple Design Patent (http://www.google.com/patents/USD504889). See below. (It's very much like the German injunction last year over that EU design registration.)
Interestingly, before the iPad came out in 2010, that same frontal design had been used in several products, including a 2008 Canadian designed Windows slate which looked similar even down to the slimness:
Samsung (and others) had already come up with that same frontal design on their own in a 2006 picture frame, albeit with a much deeper back.
Apple, however, made the shape popular. Following a popular trend is different from copying a previously unknown design.
None of those examples show close copies, but general similarity in shapes.
To paraphrase The Princess Bride, I don't think "copy" means what you think it does :)