Breaking News – Apple and Samsung Back in Australian Court

Apple and Samsung were back in the Federal Court of Australia in Sydney this morning, to continue their ‘discussions’ over the fate of Samsung’s iPad-challenging Galaxy Tab 10.1.

The purpose of today’s ‘directions hearing’ was to set the timetable for the next stages of Apple’s patent infringement suit against Samsung, which commenced at the beginning of August, and resulted in a delay in the launch of the Galaxy Tab 10.1, originally intended for 11 August 2011 (see It’s Apple vs Samsung Down-Under as Smartphone War Escalates).

As we predicted, it is being reported in the Fairfax press today that Samsung has indeed already complied with its undertaking to provide Apple with three samples of its proposed Australian product.  However, while Samsung had apparently been planning a new launch date of 12 September 2011, it seems that this may now be further delayed to permit a more substantive hearing to take place in relation to Apple’s request for an injunction, sometime in late September.

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Tags: Apple-v-Samsung, Australia, Computer programs, Infringement, Interlocutory injunction, Litigation, Smartphone wars

Gene Patent Bill Update – Senate Inquiry Extended… Again

As some readers will recall, the Australian Senate Legal and Constitutional Committee, which is currently conducting the inquiry on the Patent Amendment (Human Genes and Biological Materials) Bill 2010, was originally due to report by 16 June 2011.

Having received over 100 written submissions, and conducted two days of public hearings, the Senate granted the Committee an extension of time for reporting, until 25 August 2011 (see Update on the Australian Senate Gene Patent Inquiry).

Now, in the most recent development, on 23 August 2011 the Senate granted the Committee a further extension of time, until 21 September 2011.

Rumour has it (and we would love to hear from anyone with any additional ‘inside information’) that the reason for this latest delay is, quite simply, because the Committee is hopelessly divided over the Bill, and is unable to reach a sufficient consensus to make any recommendation.

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Tags: Australia, Genetic technology, Law reform, Patentable subject matter

Dutch Courts Will Issue ‘Pan-European’ Injunctions: We Were Wrong!

Last Thursday we stated that reports of a cross-border injunction issued by a Dutch court were incorrect, because the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has previously ruled that national courts do not have the power to issue such injunctions in patent matters.

We could follow the lead of the mainstream media, and call this post a ‘clarification’.  But we will not.  Instead, we will call a spade a spade, and admit the simple truth – we were wrong.

Quite aside from anything else, the truth is far more interesting, and only serves to reinforce the main point of our previous article – the Netherlands is a really good place to validate a European patent relating to products that are imported to, or exported from, continental Europe.

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Tags: Apple-v-Samsung, Europe, Infringement, Injunctions, Litigation, Smartphone wars

Why Apple Has Patents In The Netherlands & Maybe You Should Too

There is something we need to say right up front in this post, before taking a few steps back to explain in more detail.  Contrary to what you may have read in many places elsewhere, Apple has not obtained an injunction from a Dutch court which is effective (formally or otherwise) across all of Europe.  The injunction, based upon a patent in-force in the Netherlands, and deriving originally from a European patent application, is effective only in the Netherlands.  However, as we shall see, this does not mean that the injunction is necessarily of little significance.

For those who have not been following the story, in the past day or so, Apple has had a mixed result in a court in The Hague in its ongoing battles with Samsung.

On the positive side (for Apple, not so much for Samsung) the Dutch court made a preliminary finding that Samsung’s Galaxy S, Galaxy S II and Ace smartphones infringe an Apple patent relating to a particular ‘photo gallery’ function, and issued a corresponding injunction barring Samsung from dealing with these accused products in the Netherlands.

In many ways, however, the decision might be viewed as a setback for Apple, which was unsuccessful in the following respects:

1. the court did not find any infringement by Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1, or other tablet devices;
2. the court also expressed an opinion that Apple’s ‘swipe-to-unlock’ patent was most likely invalid on grounds of obviousness, and therefore refused to make a preliminary finding of infringement against Samsung; and
3. the injunction does not, in any event, go into effect until 13 October 2011, which provides Samsung with plenty of time to modify its products to remove the offending feature.

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Tags: Apple-v-Samsung, Europe, Infringement, Patent litigation, Smartphone wars

Did Stanley Kubrick Invent the iPad2?

The short answer to the question in the subject line is ‘no’.  Neither the director Stanley Kubrick, nor writer Arthur C. Clarke, can be credited with having invented the iPad2 in their depiction of tablet-style devices in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey.

However, they may have designed its external appearance, and this may be enough to prevent Apple from enforcing its alleged intellectual property rights in relation to the physical appearance of its latest tablet.

As is being widely reported today (e.g. in the Fairfax press here in Australia, and on the FOSS Patents blog), Samsung has offered a still image, and a YouTube clip, from Kubrick’s film in its defence of a US ‘patent’ lawsuit brought against it by Apple.  There has been some confusion, however, due to the fact that in the US there are three kinds of ‘patents’.  The familiar ‘utility patent’ protects functional inventions, while the ‘design patent’ protects physical appearance.  The third type of patent is a ‘plant patent’ which protects new plant breeds.

Here in Australia, as in many other countries, we avoid this confusion by calling our equivalent to the ‘design patent’ simply a ‘registered design’.

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Tags: Apple-v-Samsung, Australia, Designs, Litigation, Smartphone wars, US