Australian Appeals Court Reviewing Galaxy Tab Sales Ban

Bloomberg reports that an Australian appeals court is currently hearing testimony in its review of the injunction currently preventing Samsung from selling its Galaxy Tab 10.1 in the country due to complaints from Apple of design infringement.

apple samsung logos
According to the report, judges in the appeals case appear to be somewhat skeptical of the fairness of the injunction, leading to speculation that they may lift the injunction when they rule on the case early next week.

“The result looks terribly fair to Apple and not terribly fair to Samsung,” Federal Court Justice Lindsay Foster said today at a hearing in Sydney on Samsung’s appeal for the ban to be overturned.

Federal Court Justice Annabelle Bennett issued an injunction Oct. 13 barring the sale of the Galaxy 10.1 Tab in Australia until Apple and Samsung resolve the patent dispute at trial. Bennett failed to consider the “dire consequences” of the ban on Samsung, which has been “entirely shut out” from marketing the device, Neil Young, Samsung’s lawyer, said today.

Judges also questioned whether lifting the injunction would severely harm Apple during the approximately three-month window before the full trial can take place in March.

The introduction of the Galaxy tablet at 600 Australian stores would also affect sales of iPhones, Mac computers and applications because people who buy one device tend to purchase other related products, [Apple lawyer Stephen] Burley said.

“We’re talking about a period of three months and all of Apple will come tumbling down?” [Justice John] Dowsett said. That’s “very speculative,” he said.

Samsung has noted that it will scrap the Galaxy Tab 10.1 launch in Australia entirely if it is not permitted to sell during the holiday shopping season, arguing that it will have missed the window to make an impact in the market. The company has also faced lawsuits and injunctions in other countries and just last week introduced a tweaked version of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Germany in an attempt to skirt around an injunction there and satisfy complaints that the original design too closely mimicked that of the iPad.

Popular Stories

iPhone 17 Air Size Feature

'iPhone 17 Air' With Rear Camera Bar Allegedly Shown in Leaked Photo

Tuesday January 21, 2025 12:46 pm PST by
A leaker known as "Majin Bu" today shared an alleged image of a component for the rumored, ultra-thin "iPhone 17 Air" model. The blurry, pixelated image shows a pair of rear iPhone shells with a pill-shaped, raised camera bar along the top. On the left side of the bar, there is a circular cutout that appears to be for a single rear camera. On the right side of the bar, there appears to be an ...
Generic iOS 19 Feature Mock Light

iOS 19 Leak Reveals All-New Design

Friday January 17, 2025 2:42 pm PST by
iOS 19 is still around six months away from being announced, but a new leak has allegedly revealed a completely redesigned Camera app. Based on footage it obtained, YouTube channel Front Page Tech shared a video showing what the new Camera app will apparently look like, with the key change being translucent menus for camera controls. Overall, the design of these menus looks similar to...
iOS 18

Here Are Apple's Full Release Notes for iOS 18.3

Tuesday January 21, 2025 4:31 pm PST by
Apple provided developers and public beta testers with the release candidate version of iOS 18.3 today, and with it comes release notes confirming what's new. While we knew about several of the features that are in the update, there are some lesser known tweaks and bug fixes. The update adds new Visual Intelligence features for iPhone 16 models, it tweaks Notification summaries on all...
iPhone SE Dynamic Island Majin Bu

iPhone SE 4 Leak Shows Dynamic Island, Casts Doubt on Rumored 'iPhone 16E' Name

Monday January 20, 2025 9:01 am PST by
A new iPhone SE is widely rumored to launch this year, and the device has potentially been confirmed today by known leaker Evan Blass. In a private social media post, Blass shared an image of what appears to be source code mentioning an iPhone SE (4th Gen), which casts doubt on the alternative "iPhone 16E" name rumored for the device. However, the name in the source code could be a...
2024 App Store Awards

Apple Explains Why It Removed TikTok From the App Store in the U.S.

Sunday January 19, 2025 6:58 am PST by
Apple on late Saturday removed TikTok from the App Store in the U.S., and it has now explained why it was required to take this action. Last year, the U.S. passed a law that required Chinese company ByteDance to divest its ownership of TikTok due to potential national security risks, or else the platform would be banned. That law went into effect today, and companies like Apple and Google...
truecaller

Truecaller iOS Update Rolls Out Real-Time Caller ID Support

Wednesday January 22, 2025 2:07 am PST by
Popular caller ID app Truecaller is rolling out an update that brings real-time caller ID support to its iOS subscribers. Apple introduced Live Caller ID Lookup in iOS 18, allowing third-party caller ID apps to securely retrieve information about a caller from their servers, hence today's Truecaller update. iPhone users can enable the Live Caller ID Lookup feature by going to Settings ➝ ...
airtag 4 pack blue

AirTag 2 Launching This Year With These 3 New Features

Sunday January 19, 2025 8:11 am PST by
After a four-year wait, a new AirTag is finally expected to launch in 2025. Below, we recap rumored upgrades for the accessory. A few months ago, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said Apple was aiming to release the AirTag 2 around the middle of 2025. While he did not offer a more specific timeframe, that means the AirTag 2 could be announced by the end of June. The original AirTag was announced...
ipad pro 2024

New iPad Pro Reportedly Launching This Year

Tuesday January 21, 2025 6:40 am PST by
Apple plans to release at least one new iPad Pro model this year, according to a supplier-focused report today from Korean website The Elec. It is likely that the 11-inch and 13-inch iPad Pro models would be updated simultaneously. After receiving an OLED display last year, the report said the iPad Pro will receive only "minor" changes this year. Overall, the next iPad Pro is expected to...
iOS 19 Roundup Feature

iOS 19 Rumored to Be Compatible With These iPhones

Saturday January 18, 2025 10:28 am PST by
iOS 19 will not drop support for any iPhone models, according to French website iPhoneSoft.fr. The report cited a source who said iOS 19 will be compatible with any iPhone that can run iOS 18, which would mean the following models: iPhone 16 iPhone 16 Plus iPhone 16 Pro iPhone 16 Pro Max iPhone 15 iPhone 15 Plus iPhone 15 Pro iPhone 15 Pro Max iPhone 14 iPhon...

Top Rated Comments

Winni Avatar
172 months ago
So I make a copycat product and start selling it in Australia around October and when Apple sues my company, I would want the judge to appeal that it will hurt my business as well as business of retailers in Australia.

Please allow me to infringe on IP and make copy cat products. Please.

Since Android's development started more than four years before Apple even ANNOUNCED the iPhone, and Android was even offered to Apple before they introduced iPhone OS/iOS, I really, really wonder who's the real copycat here. Common sense tells me that Android can hardly be the copycat, especially not when it took Apple five MAJOR releases to introduce features that Android had right from the beginning.

Ah, you're talking about the hardware design? Rounded corners? You mean that rounded corner's concept that Steve Jobs stole from TRAFFIC SIGNS back in the early 1980s when the Lisa and Macintosh teams at Apple were busy stealing the idea of the graphical user interface from the Xerox Star?

Or do you mean the entire design concept that we could all already see in 2001: A Space Odyssey or Star Trek and that all simple digital frames had already had long before there even was an iPad on the market?

Really, it's not that Apple were the first ones to come up with ANY of that stuff. They created a well engineered, well designed product family. But, as we say in Germany, "es ist nicht auf ihrem Mist gewachsen" -- it didn't grow on their dung. Like everybody else in the industry, they're standing on the shoulder's of other giants and mostly just IMPROVED what others had already invented.

Yes, Apple puts a lot of culture in their products and make them feel 'unique' - but that is not always for the better. Just look at that annoyance that Apple calls "synchronization", which in their language means wiping out the target device while in everybody else's language it means bringing both the target and the source to the same levels by copying stuff in both directions.

Using words like "copycats" is just stupid Apple marketing blah like their overuse of superlatives like "awesome, revolutionary, magical, beautiful". But I admit that it never fails to amaze me how well their brainwashing works with their target audience. But at the end of the day, it was all just a shallow sales pitch.
Score: 16 Votes (Like | Disagree)
aerok Avatar
172 months ago
Apple's came first, then Samsung's.

Image (http://img717.imageshack.us/img717/8166/110624samsungknockoffs2.jpg)

Where was Samsung's big January 2010 tablet unveiling? You know, the one where it would be the Samsung CEO sitting comfortably in that easy-chair giving the keynote and astounding the tech world. Or Samsung's opportunity in 2007 to say via their CEO in a landmark keynote "It's an iPod (well, not for Sammy), a phone, and an internet communicator . . . an iPod, a phone, and internet communicator . . ."

What happened? All these game-changers, after which competing devices all began to look like them, (with some people not even being able to tell them apart: https://www.macrumors.com/2011/10/14/samsung-lawyers-also-struggle-to-tell-ipad-and-galaxy-tab-apart/) have Apple logos on the back.

Samsung should look up "first-mover" somewhere. They should try it for a change.

Very misleading picture, they should show the homescreen on the Galaxy and not app drawer. Once again, you fail to post relevantly due to your blindness.
Score: 12 Votes (Like | Disagree)
KnightWRX Avatar
172 months ago
So I make a copycat product and start selling it in Australia around October and when Apple sues my company, I would want the judge to appeal that it will hurt my business as well as business of retailers in Australia.

Please allow me to infringe on IP and make copy cat products. Please.
3 things wrong with your post. This lawsuit isn't about "copying" or design, it's about patents for hardware and software. Also, both sides have cited issues with patent infringement yet only Apple was granted an injunction. Finally, Samsung has not been found to infringe on the Apple patents yet, the trial is in March.

Facts, don't let them get in the way of a good bashing uh ?

Edit : gah should always stay logged in, that way my ignore list stays in effect and I don't see these posts by people who have a tendency for heavily biased rants wit no root in reality.
Score: 11 Votes (Like | Disagree)
whooleytoo Avatar
172 months ago
So I make a copycat product and start selling it in Australia around October and when Apple sues my company, I would want the judge to appeal that it will hurt my business as well as business of retailers in Australia.

Please allow me to infringe on IP and make copy cat products. Please.

Why not wait until the trial, and if Samsung are found to have infringed, THEN come down like a tonne of bricks on them?

Even if Samsung win the case, and Apple are forced to pay some penalty for the injunction, it still keeps Samsung out of the market, and adds a huge amount of doubt to Samsung shareholders & potential investors.

I'm not really a fan of punishment based on accusation.
Score: 9 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Oletros Avatar
172 months ago
Maybe this article can explain it a bit:

http://mobile.osnews.com/printer.php?news_id=25264

Still, I don't understand, why Android doesn't have 90 % of market, when it was developed earlier and was so better than iPhone... If they had top product, why they didn't release it as first?

And? I was only saying that there were touch only prototypes, not only the bb ones as you implied.

----------

....

And this has to do with the thread exactly how?
Score: 8 Votes (Like | Disagree)
kdarling Avatar
172 months ago
Re: Australian Injunction

There were just two Apple patents at question for the interlocutory injunction. (There had been three, but Apple withdrew their slide-to-unlock one after the Netherlands judge on the other side of the world said it was probably not a valid patent.)

One was about the construction of a capacitive touchscreen. The patent speaks of painting circuits on both sides of a sheet of material. Samsung says they didn't do that because they used two separate sheets. Apple tried to claim that they didn't necessarily mean both sides of the SAME sheet. The judge didn't think much of Apple's new interpretation, since the patent claims didn't mention that situation, but she was willing to defer for the time being.

The other patent is the one about deciding whether to lock scrolling to only vertical, or to allow 2D movements, depending on the starting flick angle. The judge questioned the same claim writing that I did when it came out, which was: does the patent cover a way of determining the angle or not?

Since the judge determined that no one could agree on what Apple's ambiguous patent claims meant, even experts that were brought in, she decided that the only choice was to continue to trial.

Re: Andy Rubin et al

When you've been in the business this long, you know that the reason the same ideas show up everywhere is partly because the same people keep popping up everywhere. Their talents are why they're hired by various companies, and naturally they bring their ideas with them.

Instead of admiring companies, device fans should be admiring the engineers that have built the basic ideas that everyone uses... whether they work for their favorite company right now or not.

Re: Xerox

Jobs didn't understand the Mac project and tried to kill it. He had to be dragged over to see the Xerox stuff. Once he did, he loved the idea of a GUI(even though he admits he didn't pay any attention to the just as amazing object oriented software or inter-networking).

However, Apple never paid Xerox anything directly. They gave Xerox the right to buy 100,000 shares of pre-IPO Apple stock, which Xerox later did... and then sold a couple of years later.

In return, Xerox gave Apple a license to make a single device, the Lisa. Apple later claimed that anything done after that belonged to them, not Xerox, which is what caused Xerox to sue them.
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)