Full story Apple blocks sale of Samsung's Android fondleslab across EU ? The Register

I think this is about sales rather than anything else.

Apple seem to be growing increasingly worried about the growing competition to the iPad, particularly from the newer Android tablets.

Every second ad break on TV seems to feature an iPad advert so if Apple can stop sales of an important rival for a while then so much the better (for them).

The original article says Apple are already suing Samsung (smartphones and tablets) and HTC in USA. HTC are suing them back Of course it's about sales, Apple must be afraid the competition may start to harm their profits.

It seems utterly stupid to me.

Apple can hardly claim they invented the tablet PC?

Apple obviously see Samsung as a threat so rather than take part in healthy free market competition they now bring in the lawyers in a malicious prosecution to try to stop Samsung. They are turning into a nasty Microsoft II and they are asking to get hit with antitrust legislation in due course (and I sincerely hope that Apple are if they continue to behave in this poor way).

What puzzles me is how a regional court in Dusseldorf can grant an injunction that is enforceable across the whole of the EU (except NL)?

As an aside I see that Amazon, by offering a 'cloud app' for Kindle have managed to avoid the 30% Apple surcharge for purchases made using an iPad app - good for them and good news for iPad Kindle users.

A fight between Amazon and Apple would be interesting wouldn't it?

LINK

Doesn't sound like a very smart move by Apple considering Samsung make so many of their components.

http://gizmodo.com/5829779/what-if-s...r-the-iphone-4

You would hope that politicians would only allow a high court to impose such a sales restriction across all of the EU.

And this against a large multi-national.

So casual the way the EU allows control on a whim.

Apple have cast iron contracts so its unlikely to effect them short and long term.
Its Apple who always pull the plug, not the other way round.

It's already leaked/reported that Chimei Innolux Corporation are making iPad 2 displays. Using multi suppliers certainly ensures Apple keeps control.

Apple stuff on the whole is just high quality but very mature technology. They just don't take the high risk stuff.
Have you ever heard of supply chain farmers winning against Tesco?

I despise Apple and Jobs and the way they stifle the competition through the courts. I also despise the spineless EU for laying down and rolling over. I despise the hypocrisy of Apple in accusing others of copying them. Screw you Jobs and Apple and your slavish cult.

If they had their way and thought they'd get away with it, they would patent electricty.

Ok, after my rant, I have discovered that the court decision is not legally binding throughout the EU as the EU cannot regulate IP. The decision can only be considered by member states. I am sure Samsung's lawyers are working very hard to get clarification to allow the import in EU member states. so it seems only Germany have taken this decision,

(With thanks to the poster Rudiger on theinquirer.net comments section)

All companies protect their patents, It's common sense to do so. If you spend millions either Inventing something or buying the patent from someone who did then you are going to protect that.

Android breaches many patents and it's about time they were forced to start paying for it. Google had the chance to buy loads of patents and they pulled out leaving them to Apple and Microsoft which was a daft move.They then try and cry hard up when they are one of the biggest and richest IT companies about ATM

As for samsung, they treat all their company's as separate entities. Apple suing their consumer products department wont effect Apple buying components such as Flash.

"Patent" seems to have changed its meaning. Used to be you patented the way in which you achieved something but now you claim IP on an idea and can stop anyone else from using the same idea.

The look and feel is at issue here. It is a spurious claim as we all know. My Dell flatscreen monitor I am looking at now looks exactly like an iPad.

As for breaching patents, do you know which patents are currently in contention? here are the two in the apple v HTC case.

U.S. Patent No. 5,946,647 on a “system and method for performing an action on a structure in computer-generated data.”

U.S. Patent No. 6,343,263 on a “real-time signal processing system for serially transmitted data.”

Can you see how any phone manufacturer post 1994 and 1996 when the patent were filed are able to make a phone or other electronic labour saving device which does not breach this broad and unclear patent? The nature of apple's patents and/or the US patent system is at the centre of the problem. Too weak, too vague and too broad.

Absolutely.

One of Apple's most recent patents involves the use of gestures to control action on a screen without actually touching the screen. Viewers of Minority Report will be very familiar with this when Tom Cruise's character accesses the computer system........yet Apple have copyrighted the idea.

Can I just say it's refreshing to see someone giving credit to their sources like that.

copyrighted the idea?

don't you mean they have a patent to make it work?

i could think of an idea like a flying car, but that's an idea. i couldn't make a flying car

when someone makes a flying car they can have the patent. just cuz i thought of it first doesn't mean i have the rights to the flying car

to get the patents you need to actually create the design at least. it's like the difference between having an idea for a movie and having written the script. we can all have ideas, but who can follow them through?

But the patent always applied to the way you achieved the "flying car". If someone else came along with a much more elegantly engineered solution that achieves it in an different way, they weren't at your mercy.

I know what I mean all right.

Apple have a patent for touchless gestures (as seen on Minority Report) and to my knowledge, this technology is not in the wild as yet but you can bet your bottom dollar that if a competitor does bring something similar out, it will be lawsuit time because that is how that effing company operate.

Yes it is cynical and yes it is very flippant to say they copyrighted the idea but they might as well have done for all the good it will do competitors with similar ideas yet different approaches.

Use of gestures is just evolution of human language.

So can I invent a word derivative, get it patented and once everyone uses it 'wham bam, I'm a richer man'?

Microsoft showed their version of 'gesture control' about two years ago so I wonder where they will fit in.

It seems the Dutch courts disagree with the German ruling:

http://www.slashgear.com/samsung-esc...tion-11171102/

No injunction and the final ruling will be made in September, the decision of a sane court that allowed Samsung to defend themselves.

The EU injunction treats Samsung as guilty until prove innocent. I'm shocked by the conduct of the German courts but I bet Apple chose them intentionally.

I patented jerking off, i'm gonna be rich.

I'm pretty sure I can find some prior art for that