Apple Vs Samsung: Australian Court Bans Samsung From Selling Galaxy Tab 10.1

Apple Vs Samsung: Australian Court Bans Samsung From Selling Galaxy Tab 10.1

After obtaining preliminary injunctions in a number of countries, Apple's lawyers have managed to block the sale of Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Australia. The injunction although not permanent, stays valid until a full hearing which is scheduled to happen sometime next year.

The case which started with Apple claiming infringement of up to 13 patents, at the end came down to two patents, one of which credited Steve Jobs as its inventor. Sydney Morning Herald reports:

Justice Annabelle Bennett today said Apple had a prima facie case that Samsung had infringed two of its patents relating to touch screens and the gestures that control them.

Samsung had agreed to not start selling or even marketing the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Australia until a decision was arrived at, and at one point of time even contemplated scrapping the release of the product due to the excessive delays.

Samsung, in its response to the decision voiced its disappointment saying:

"Samsung will be seeking legal advice on its options. Samsung will continue its legal proceeding against Apple's claim in order to ensure our innovative products remain available to consumers. We will continue to legally assert our intellectual property rights against those who violate Samsung’s patents and free ride on our technology."

The last sentence refers to a number of patents owned by Samsung related to wireless networks, which the iPhone 4S allegedly infringes. Samsung has been quite vocal about its decision to counter-sue Apple, eyeing at a ban on the iPhone 4S in various countries including Australia.

Although we aren't intellectual property experts, at first look Apple's claim of Samsung "slavishly" copying iOS devices does seem true to a certain extent, as can be seen in this post.

Florian Mueller of FOSS Patents, goes onto speculate:

The two patents on which today's ruling is based aren't Galaxy Tab 10.1-specific at all. They will affect all Android-based smartphones and tablet computers, across all vendors.

If Apple wins the Australian case at the end of the main proceeding, all Android-based products will effectively be shut out of the Australian market forever, unless Google or its device maker partners settle with Apple.

For now, this decision essentially means that Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1 won't ever make its début in Australia. Even if the outcome of the final hearing (which won't start before next year) goes in Samsung's favor, the market by then would have evolved a lot making the Galaxy Tab 10.1 outdated.

[via SMH, iTnews]

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Posted by Rounak on October 13, 2011 in Apple News, Apple Patents | Permalink|Comments (10)

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Derek said...

i think all this is crap and i have gone from apple to android and think everyone should be able to use others patents cause it can not be hard to come up with the same ideas, infact 20 years ago i came up with the idea of using a touch screen but did not patent it, what a load of bol****s

October 13, 2011 at 8:02 PM Reply fas said...

Stop this fight guys, will you?

October 13, 2011 at 8:32 PM Reply More information please said...

Touch screens have been around for years. Think of some Automatic Teller Machines, computer based information kiosks at hardware stores, tourist centres and airports. What about the domestic GPS unit.

All these devices have touch screens and put to market before any ipad. The concept of entering data by touching a screen is not new.

Exactly what was the infringement in regards to touch screens? 1. The concept of using a touch screen as an input output device device, or
2. The electronic design of the touch screen?

Is Apple claiming the touch screen is all their idea and no one else in the world had ever built a touch screen i/o device before them?

October 13, 2011 at 9:45 PM Reply Diaz said...

Capacitive touchscreen is apple’s invention-
And the screens you were talking about don’t support gestures like two finger zooming etc..
So samsung is violating apple patents in those cases-
But apple seem to be also violating samsung’s patents..
This is really exciting- the more there will be competition between them the more we are willing to have awesome devices from them because they all claim to do the best possible smartphones. I owned iPhone 2g, 3GS and I’m using the 4 currently but I am eager to see what the Ice Cream Sandwich has to offer.
Competition is good for consumer! Keep fighting please

October 13, 2011 at 11:12 PM Reply Hank said...

I have to agree with Diaz. I think Apple came up first with multitouch device.

No one is denying that touch screens have been around for years, but they were limited to single tap commands from a stylus. For example, you could not zoom in/out by pinching your two fingers.

It is justifiable for Apple to defend their products.

October 14, 2011 at 12:24 AM Reply anakin said...

lol Apple is desperate. They are fighting an unwinnable war.

Sorry but, software wise, nothing can beat a flexible mobile OS like Android. Even scientists, engineers at NASA has come public stating they preferred android over the iphone on the space station because it is more easier and more customizable to use.

And hardware wise, the iphone has only apple. The android has an army (samsung, htc, etc..) of new handsets (phones or tablets) released every year all different variations for different needs. Apple cannot keep up. I would agree that the first 2-3 years of android phones had its share of problems but the new phones like the samsung galaxy s2 is changing everything.

We have passed the tipping point of Apple’s success since last february and Apple knows it. The iphone will always exist but will see its popularity diminish considerably.

October 14, 2011 at 12:52 AM Reply anakin said...

btw for those who are curious;

Android now has 190 million activations in 130 countries, up from 135 million 3 months ago. Google+ has over 40 million users, and over 3.4 billion photos have been uploaded to date.

Android is growing day by day.

October 14, 2011 at 12:57 AM Reply RelicS13 said...

hey anakin, go away…
oh and your gay

October 14, 2011 at 2:52 AM Reply eddie-a said...

Apple just sold a million iPhones in 24 hours. Doesn’t matter what the internals of a phone have so long as it runs fine, that’s why iOS is better.. it’s not fragmented like Android. why are you on an iPhone forum anyway? came here to hate as usual? get out of here fandroid

October 14, 2011 at 2:33 AM Reply Ksimply said...

its monopoly for each other’s….its a Politics of Electron…wht u like buy it …wht u dont ….dont try …

October 14, 2011 at 6:11 AM Reply Leave a ReplyClick here to cancel reply.

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Supreme Court to Hear Arkansas' Double-Jeopardy Case

The Supreme Court has decided to hear a case out of Arkansas that will test just how big the exceptions to the double-jeopardy protection are

Even Americans who know very little about the U.S. Constitution know this much: once a jury decides you are innocent of a crime, the government can't keep hauling you back into court to try your case over again. It's called the prohibition on double jeopardy, and it's in the Bill of Rights because the Founding Fathers thought it was an essential bulwark against tyranny. But like most truisms in American law — that the police have to read you your rights before they question you, that it takes a unanimous verdict to be convicted, or that the police need a warrant to search your house — there are exceptions large enough to drive a prison bus through.

The Supreme Court this week decided to hear a case out of Arkansas that will test just how big the exceptions to the double-jeopardy protection contained in the Fifth Amendment are, and experts say the decision could resolve long-standing differences between the states about when it's O.K. for the government to retry defendants when it can't get a conviction the first time. Because of the nature in which the decisions were made in Arkansas, the U.S. Supreme Court could use the case to decide what constitutes an official verdict. (Read about your Bill of Rights and pleading the Fifth Amendment.)

Arkansas prosecutors want to try Alex Blueford on capital-murder charges because they believe he hit his girlfriend's 19-month-old toddler, Thomas McFadden Jr., so hard that the boy's eyes bled and his brain swelled so much that he died.

Trouble is, the state has already tried him once and without success. There is no question it was an ugly set of circumstances. During the 2009 trial, Blueford told jurors he had lied repeatedly to the doctors as they rushed to save the boy's life because he was afraid no one would believe him when he explained that his elbow connected to the side of Thomas' head only after the boy (nicknamed Fat Man, according to news reports covering the trial) had startled him from behind. He insisted it was an accident. The jurors apparently believed him. After about 4½ hours of deliberations, the jury forewoman sent a message to the judge saying they were having trouble deciding. Back in open court, according to a partial court transcript, the jury forewoman explained that they had voted unanimously — 12 to 0 — for acquittal on the capital-murder charge, and then voted 12 to 0 for acquittal on a charge of first-degree murder. But they were split over a third charge, manslaughter, for which the vote was 9 to 3 to convict. They hadn't yet begun discussing a fourth charge, a misdemeanor charge of negligent homicide, which would have resulted in Blueford's immediate release.

Blueford's attorneys asked the judge to enter the announcement as a verdict on the two most serious charges, but the judge declined. He told the jury to try again and when they reported they were still deadlocked on the manslaughter charge, he immediately declared a mistrial.

Prosecutors moved quickly to bring charges against Blueford a second time and readied for a second trial. His attorneys asked the Arkansas Supreme Court to throw out the two murder charges, arguing that another trial would be exactly the kind of double jeopardy the Bill of Rights is designed to protect against. The court disagreed, noting that the forewoman's statements in open court about the unanimous votes to acquit didn't amount to a real verdict because the decisions were never written down on a verdict form and entered into the record. "It is axiomatic that a judgment is not valid until entered of record," the Arkansas Supreme Court ruled in January. "We further stated in [a previous case] that a judgment rendered in open court is not controlling until entered or filed of record. The mere reading of the jury's verdict in open court does not constitute an acquittal." (Watch a video over the Supreme Court.)

That a defendant would have to endure a second trial after a seeming victory in the first round is nothing new. Prosecutors routinely retry defendants after a hung jury. And they often win on their second crack at the case: just ask former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich in Chicago. The first time out, federal prosecutors were only able to win a conviction on a single, relatively minor charge — out of 24 — and Blagojevich all but declared victory. A year later, however, they were all back in court and jurors saw things much differently. The U.S. got him on 17 of the 20 charges, including many that he had seemed to beat on the first round.

But Blueford's case is different, say his attorneys and dozens of law professors and others who have filed friend-of-the-court briefs in his support. For one thing, the jury didn't fail to agree that he was guilty — as with Blagojevich's first case — they actually voted on both serious charges, and in both cases were unanimous that he was innocent. Lawyer Charles Curtis, a partner at Arnold & Porter LLP working pro bono on the case, co-wrote an amicus brief on behalf of more than a dozen criminal-law professors supporting Blueford's request for a Supreme Court hearing. He told TIME that allowing the Arkansas Supreme Court's ruling to stand in this case would be a triumph of form over substance. Just because a jury's unanimous decision isn't read into the record as a formal verdict, and filed in written form, it doesn't mean the 12 jurors hadn't made a decision. They had, he argued.

"This is an especially compelling case," he told TIME this Wednesday. "In Arkansas, they have what is known as a hard transition rule, which means that jurors are instructed that they cannot consider a lesser included charge until after they have already come to a unanimous decision against convicting on the more serious charge. They have to go in order, which is usually a gift to the prosecutors. They have to convict on the most serious charge they can agree on, and can't skip to a lesser offense." (Read a review of Five Chiefs, Justice John Paul Stevens' Supreme Court memoir.)

In a second amicus brief, on behalf of the Constitutional Accountability Center, a liberal think tank and law firm, lawyers argued that the Fifth Amendment was designed in part to protect against the government's influence over judicial proceedings, and that "fundamental principles do not lose their force here simply because the jury that heard Blueford's case was not able to resolve all of the charges against him ... The Fifth Amendment's prohibition on double jeopardy protects the jury's judgment that the defendant is not guilty of the charges and is entitled to an acquittal, not the ministerial act of reducing their vote to a judgment."

Arkansas sees it differently, of course. The attorney general's office argues that the trial transcript reveals nothing more than "that a discussion transpired between the trial judge and the jury foreperson without any attendant formalities and before the jury had concluded its deliberations." Its lawyers argue that the state supreme court got it right when it ruled against Blueford in an opinion that "speaks to the well-established requirement that any final verdict must be presented and received in such manner that each juror appreciates the finality and gravity of the verdict and unanimously affirms it."

The nine Justices in Washington will have the final say about who got it right when they issue their ruling, which isn't expected until sometime next year.

See TIME's special on Supreme Court nomination battles.

See the top 10 landmark Supreme Court cases.

Court Convicts Ukraine's Former Prime Minister

• Related Topics: E.U. , Association Agreement, Catherine Ashton, Cathy Ashton, E.U., Orange Revolution, Russia, trial, Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, Vladimir Putin, Yulia Tymoshenko Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko (R) listens as Judge Rodion Kireyev of the Kiev Pechersky court reads the verdict to her on October 11, 2011. (Photo: Sergei Supinsky / AFP / Getty Images)

The judge read out the guilty verdict, and Yulia Tymoshenko's supporters shouted “Shame!”

This afternoon a court ruled that Tymoshenko, Ukraine's former Prime Minister, had acted against the national interest when she signed a natural gas deal with Russia in 2009, leading to $190 million in damages to Ukraine's state-run gas company. The judge sentenced her to seven years in prison—the maximum penalty allowed—and banned her from running in next year's elections. It's a harsh—but not altogether surprising—end to a controversial trial which Tymoshenko has described as a “political lynching” led by President Viktor Yanukovych.

Tymoshenko greeted the verdict with the same steely defiance that turned her into the heroine of the 2004 Orange Revolution, in which she helped expose Yanukovych's fraudulent election victory. She irritated the 31-year old judge by repeatedly addressing reporters while he delivered his lengthy ruling, which was spread out over several hours. "We will fight and defend my good name in the European court," she said. "We have to be strong and defend Ukraine from this authoritarianism." She went on to say that Yanukovych had returned Ukraine to 1937—the height of Stalin's oppression in the Soviet Union. Rather than focusing on the judge, she spent much of the afternoon staring at her iPad. Her wrap-around hairbraid seemed to be cinched tighter than ever.

Catherine Ashton, the E.U.'s foreign policy chief, condemned the ruling almost immediately. “The verdict comes after a trial which did not respect the international standards as regards fair, transparent and independent legal process,” she said. “This unfortunately confirms that justice is being applied selectively in politically motivated prosecutions of the leaders of the opposition and members of the former government.”

The chorus of rebukes complicates Ukraine's efforts to integrate with Europe at a time the country had been making substantial progress. Ukraine is scheduled to hammer out the final details of an Association Agreement with the E.U., which would pave the way for a free trade zone, on Oct. 20. Sources within the E.U. now say a diplomatic snub of the Brussels meeting is a strong possibility. Even if a meeting does take place, E.U. leaders will find it more difficult to sign on the dotted line. As Ashton said in her statement, Tymoshenko's conviction "risks having profound implications for the E.U.-Ukraine bilateral relationship, including for the conclusion of the Association Agreement, our political dialogue and our co-operation more broadly."

Besides harming Ukraine's relations with the E.U., fallout from the Tymoshenko trial could drive a wedge between Yanukovych and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. It's not just that Putin is thought to prefer Tymoshenko as a partner for — rather than as an imprisoned opponent of — Yanukovych. It's that her trial revolved around a gas deal conducted with Russia, and more specifically with Putin himself. Yanukovych may have hoped the trial would encourage Russia to revisit the terms of that agreement. Instead it appears to have left Putin slightly bewildered. "I do not really understand what Tymoshenko has been jailed for seven years for," he told reporters in Russia. "Tymoshenko herself did not sign anything. All the contracts were signed between Gazprom and Naftogaz."

Aware of the anger sweeping through corridors from Brussels to Moscow, Yanukovych suggested that the verdict could still change—and that his political rival could walk free. "Today the court took its decision in the framework of the current criminal code," he said. "This is not the final decision." Last month, Yanukovych's Regions Party hinted that it would explore the option of decriminalizing an article under which Tymoshenko has been charged. That could be ready by the time she appears before an appeals court.

Given today's outcry from world leaders, Tymoshenko won't be the only one on trial.

William Lee Adams is a staff writer at the London bureau of TIME. Find him on Twitter at @willyleeadams. You can also continue the discussion on TIME's Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME.

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Court Convicts Ukraine's Former Prime Minister

• Related Topics: E.U. , Association Agreement, Catherine Ashton, Cathy Ashton, E.U., Orange Revolution, Russia, trial, Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, Vladimir Putin, Yulia Tymoshenko Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko (R) listens as Judge Rodion Kireyev of the Kiev Pechersky court reads the verdict to her on October 11, 2011. (Photo: Sergei Supinsky / AFP / Getty Images)

The judge read out the guilty verdict, and Yulia Tymoshenko's supporters shouted “Shame!”

This afternoon a court ruled that Tymoshenko, Ukraine's former Prime Minister, had acted against the national interest when she signed a natural gas deal with Russia in 2009, leading to $190 million in damages to Ukraine's state-run gas company. The judge sentenced her to seven years in prison—the maximum penalty allowed—and banned her from running in next year's elections. It's a harsh—but not altogether surprising—end to a controversial trial which Tymoshenko has described as a “political lynching” led by President Viktor Yanukovych.

Tymoshenko greeted the verdict with the same steely defiance that turned her into the heroine of the 2004 Orange Revolution, in which she helped expose Yanukovych's fraudulent election victory. She irritated the 31-year old judge by repeatedly addressing reporters while he delivered his lengthy ruling, which was spread out over several hours. "We will fight and defend my good name in the European court," she said. "We have to be strong and defend Ukraine from this authoritarianism." She went on to say that Yanukovych had returned Ukraine to 1937—the height of Stalin's oppression in the Soviet Union. Rather than focusing on the judge, she spent much of the afternoon staring at her iPad. Her wrap-around hairbraid seemed to be cinched tighter than ever.

Catherine Ashton, the E.U.'s foreign policy chief, condemned the ruling almost immediately. “The verdict comes after a trial which did not respect the international standards as regards fair, transparent and independent legal process,” she said. “This unfortunately confirms that justice is being applied selectively in politically motivated prosecutions of the leaders of the opposition and members of the former government.”

The chorus of rebukes complicates Ukraine's efforts to integrate with Europe at a time the country had been making substantial progress. Ukraine is scheduled to hammer out the final details of an Association Agreement with the E.U., which would pave the way for a free trade zone, on Oct. 20. Sources within the E.U. now say a diplomatic snub of the Brussels meeting is a strong possibility. Even if a meeting does take place, E.U. leaders will find it more difficult to sign on the dotted line. As Ashton said in her statement, Tymoshenko's conviction "risks having profound implications for the E.U.-Ukraine bilateral relationship, including for the conclusion of the Association Agreement, our political dialogue and our co-operation more broadly."

Besides harming Ukraine's relations with the E.U., fallout from the Tymoshenko trial could drive a wedge between Yanukovych and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. It's not just that Putin is thought to prefer Tymoshenko as a partner for — rather than as an imprisoned opponent of — Yanukovych. It's that her trial revolved around a gas deal conducted with Russia, and more specifically with Putin himself. Yanukovych may have hoped the trial would encourage Russia to revisit the terms of that agreement. Instead it appears to have left Putin slightly bewildered. "I do not really understand what Tymoshenko has been jailed for seven years for," he told reporters in Russia. "Tymoshenko herself did not sign anything. All the contracts were signed between Gazprom and Naftogaz."

Aware of the anger sweeping through corridors from Brussels to Moscow, Yanukovych suggested that the verdict could still change—and that his political rival could walk free. "Today the court took its decision in the framework of the current criminal code," he said. "This is not the final decision." Last month, Yanukovych's Regions Party hinted that it would explore the option of decriminalizing an article under which Tymoshenko has been charged. That could be ready by the time she appears before an appeals court.

Given today's outcry from world leaders, Tymoshenko won't be the only one on trial.

William Lee Adams is a staff writer at the London bureau of TIME. Find him on Twitter at @willyleeadams. You can also continue the discussion on TIME's Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME.

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