Apple apology to Samsung upheld in the UK, as iPad maker loses appeal

The Apple vs Samsung conflict continues today with an episode from Europe, the UK, to be more precise. Some of you may recall that Samsung obtained a rather awkward win in a patent case in the country, as a judge said the Galaxy Tab 10.1 was not as “cool” as the iPad, and therefore it did not infringe  on Apple’s tablet design.

But a win is still a win especially combined with the other side of the story: Apple was instructed to publicly apologize to Samsung for the troubles created by these trials. A judge told Apple that the company had to buy print ads and also state on its UK website that the Galaxy Tab 10.1 is not infringing on iPad patents.

Naturally, Apple appealed those decisions, and postponed having to publicly apologize to Samsung. But it looks like “Britain’s Court of Appeal on Thursday upheld the country’s High Court judgment.” That means Apple will still get to apologize to Samsung.

According to The Verge “the font size for the [Apple] acknowledgement must be ‘no smaller than Ari[a]l 14.’” That quote is extracted from Reuters initial report on the matter, but the publication’s updated article makes no reference to any font size for Apple’s future apologetic prints.

However, don’t expect any print ads with Apple saying it’s sorry anytime soon because Apple can still appeal the verdict at the Supreme Court,  although nothing is official yet:

“I expect this will be the end of the line. An appeal to the Supreme Court is in principle possible but there has been no indication so far that Apple plan such an appeal”, Darren Smyth partner at EIP, a specialist intellectual property law firm, told Reuters.

“For the design of tablets in Europe this should be the final word.”

Of course, when it comes to that apology to Samsung, it will definitely be interesting to see how Apple will word it out-of-the-box to save face. “Samsung, we’re sorry your Galaxy Tab 10.1 is not as cool as the iPad!” probably won’t do it.

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By | 2012-10-18T17:00:08+00:00 October 18th, 2012|Android Related, Just the Tablets|0 Comments

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