In the patent infringement dispute against Apple, Samsung has lost an overseas ruling at a Dutch court concerning the sales of its Galaxy Ace, S and S II smartphones in the country. In its ruling, the court in Hague, Netherlands stated that Samsung will be required to stop the sales of the abovementioned products after the 13th of October.
The court said that this is a preliminary ruling and that it doesn’t have any bearing on the upcoming proceedings or on the merits of the case. Even as this court in the Netherlands did not extend this ban to cover the tablets as well, a regional German court had earlier this month granted Apple a ban on the sales of the Galaxy 10.1 tablet from Samsung in all the member nations of the European Union; however, that ban was later scaled back to cover only Germany because of doubts over the court’s jurisdiction.
The courtroom battles between Apple and its competitors are steadily gaining momentum as the number of mobile phone consumers who use their devices to play games, surf the internet and download music is increasing. The largest smartphone seller in the world, Apple, has filed various patent infringement lawsuits against manufacturers such as Samsung, HTC and Motorola who make devices based on Google’s Android OS.
In the case in Netherlands, Apple has accused Samsung of having infringed three of its patents which include the way the device handles scrolling in its picture gallery, the way to unlock the device and some other design features of the iPhone and the iPad tablet.
Samsung have announced in a statement that the company will take all the precautionary measures that are possible, which include possible counter lawsuits, in order to ensure that the Dutch consumers do not suffer from any disruption in the availability of the company’s Galaxy smartphones. The company added that it doesn’t expect the ruling to affect its sales in the other markets in Europe.
The court in Dusseldorf will hold a hearing today over arguments which will decide if the ban that was instated on the 9th of August is squashed or held up. In a brief that was filed on the 4th of August, Apple wrote that the tablet lawsuit is worth around 2 million euros, quoting a preliminary estimate. Samsung is also considering replacing the offending software on the devices so as to avoid the infringement and continue selling the devices.
