This post has been updated on 3rd August
Apple has struck in Australia with its lawsuit against Samsung and their Galaxy Tab 10.1, and won. The details revolve around ten patent infringements. One of them due to the similar look of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 to the iPad 2, another due to similar touchscreen technology use, among others. Samsung’s tablet was scheduled to be released on August 11 (source) in Australia but now it looks like it won’t even make it by the end of August as a hearing will be held on August 29 to review the case.
For the time being, Samsung has agreed to stop the tablet going on sale and hand over samples, on the basis that if Apple loses the lawsuit, they’ll have to pay Samsung damages. Apple has gone through with the same lawsuit in the US, South Korea, Japan and Germany and at least in the US, they didn’t have any success. Not sure about the other countries there.
Update:
The Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 will go on sale after all in the “near future”. Remember, the official release date should be August 11 over in Australia.
According to Samsung Australia, the Galaxy Tab 10.1 model that Apple complained about is a model Samsung had no intentions of selling in Australia in the first place. There was no injunction, just a mutual agreement between both parties. The agreement? Samsung will not be allowed to sell the model in question in Australia. The question remains.. what model is Samsung talking about? That would mean either the 4G LTE model or Wi-Fi model, or maybe just a particular storage size (16GB or 32GB) or color will be excluded.
