Looks like Samsung is has been dealt a blow in their legal battle with Apple over tablet patents. The latest news is around some of the evidence that they decided to use to prove their case, we’ve all seen the clips of from 2001: A Space Odyssey and the UK television show The Tomorrow People floating around as proof that the idea of the tablet pre-dates Apple’s patent. However, The Verge reports that both the film and TV show feature characters using tablet devices, which the company hoped would constitute “prior art”: pre-existing creations will not be admissible as evidence in the trail.
The problem is that, while Samsung introduced the footage into the case in 2011, it had never disclosed the fact it intended to use them to argue Apple’s patents were invalid. As a result, Judge Lucy Koh has ruled that the video can’t be used as evidence. This is not the only tablets that are off the table, the 1994 tablet designed by Roger Fidler and the Compaq TC1000 as well as the wacky Sony-style iPhone.
