Korean gadget manufacturer Samsung has been dealt a serious blow in the company’s ongoing patent dispute with Apple, as the judge ruled today that Samsung will not be given the go-ahead with regards to being allowed to see Apple’s iPad 3 and iPhone 5’s as yet unreleased prototype versions.
The judge ruled in Apple’s favor on this issue because Samsung had originally sued Apple for infringing upon its wireless patents. The particular technologies that Samsung accused Apple of stealing were regarding the reduction of error for WCDMA networks, the tethering of cell phones to computers and PCs and better battery life and consumption over any HSPA network. Since Apple hadn’t been accused of intellectual theft by Samsung, the judge said that Samsung’s motion to see Apple’s products will have to be denied. The ruling has not come as a particular surprise to any of the experts following this lawsuit.
The entire dispute began in April this year when Apple accused Samsung of intellectual theft and violation of Apple’s intellectual property rights in its new product, the Galaxy S, by copying Apple’s trademarked designs regarding the user interface, packaging and product designing and using them in its new phone. Following this, Apple filed a motion in court asking Samsung to hand over the pre-production samples of some of its products so that it could evaluate them and judge whether any of them included designs copied from Apple as well. It further requested an injunction on the sales of those products until the dispute had been resolved. However, Apple have since had their injunction denied, meaning that Samsung is fee to sell those products in the meantime.
Samsung had filed a similar motion against Apple after Apple’s initial motion in which it had requested to see the prototype versions of Apple’s iPhone 5 and iPad 3 so that they could evaluate these products to see if they contained any of the technologies that Apple had accused them of stealing and then subsequently remove those technologies from their own devices so that Apple couldn’t accuse them of stealing and file a lawsuit again. This motion was predictably denied today.
It had earlier appeared that the dispute might be heading towards an out of court settlement after the judge advised these companies to settle and Apple’s attorney stated that there were ongoing high-level talks regarding a settlement; however Samsung have since denied the existence of any such talks.
