About a week after a Dusseldorf court temporarily lifted an injunction and allowed Samsung to sell its Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet in most of Europe, a Dutch court today imposed an EU-wide preliminary injunction against Samsung Galaxy smartphones.
According to patent blogger Florian Mueller, the Rechtbank's-Gravenhage, a Dutch court in The Hague, imposed the ban on the Galaxy smartphones but not the tablets, at the request of Apple. It will not take effect, however, until mid-October.
"At a first look it seems that the court has a skeptical perspective on a couple of the software patents asserted by Apple," Mueller wrote in a blog post.
"In legal terms, the order does not bind Samsung's Korean parent company—only three different Samsung subsidiaries registered in the Netherlands—with respect to other countries than the Netherlands," Mueller wrote. "However, it is my understanding that Samsung's European logistics use the Netherlands as the primary hub. If Samsung's Korean parent company wants to exercise its freedom to ship into other European countries despite this injunction, it will have to reorganize its logistics chain in Europe accordingly."
Mueller speculated that this could be a "severe blow for Android" since the winning patent is likely infringed by one or more of the apps that ship with Android "and without which the usefulness of Android would be impaired."
"Apple now has the first enforceable court decision in its hand (out of many lawsuits going on around the world) that finds Android to infringe an Apple patent," Mueller said.
The entire order is available online (in Dutch). For more, see What If Android Lost the Patent War?
Last week, the Regional Court of Dusseldorf temporarily reversed a portion of a preliminary injunction against Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1, allowing the company to sell the tablet outside of Germany. That could change again at an August 25 hearing, but for now, Samsung is no longer banned from selling the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Europe, except in Germany.
On that front, Mueller pointed out in a separate blog post that Samsung's opposition to Apple's request for a preliminary injunction in the U.S. appears to cite the 1969 Stanley Kubrick film 2001: A Space Odyssey as evidence in its favor.
Samsung's filing points to a still image taken from the movie (clip below), in which "two astronauts are eating and at the same time using personal computer tablets," the company wrote. "As with the design claimed by the D'889 Patent, the tablet disclosed in this clip has an overall rectangular shape with a dominant display screen, narrow borders, a predominantly flat front surface, a flat back surface (which is evident because the tablets are lying flat on the table's surface), and a thin form factor."
Essentially, Samsung is saying the idea for an iPad-esque tablet was being kicked around years before Steve Jobs and Apple ever even thought about the iPad.
Mueller said it would be "amazing" if the court agreed with Samsung based on this evidence, but "the mere fact that they proffer this kind of evidence is remarkable."
Commentors on the 2001 clip noted that Samsung might also want to peruse Star Trek episodes from the 1980s and 1990s, which show actors holding tablets. Captain Jean-Luc Picard was also apparently a fan of the devices.
The patent dispute between Apple and Samsung, meanwhile, began in April, when Apple sued Samsung for copying the look and feel of its iPhone and iPad in its flagship Galaxy S line of smartphones and tablets, among other devices. Samsung responded with a countersuit that targeted Apple for infringing on five patents relating to wireless networking technology.
For more, see PCMag's review of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 Wi-Fi as well the Samsung Galaxy S 4G review for T-Mobile and the slideshow above.
In other news, Samsung this week announced a new naming scheme for its Galaxy family of cell phones and tablets.