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Court defies Apple demand to ban Samsung tablet

Prior art to invalidate Apple patent

The Munich Regional Court has chucked out an Apple request to impose a ban on the sale of Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1N tablet and on the South Korean giant's Galaxy Nexus smartphone.

The court decided that the Apple-owned patent on which the Mac maker had pegged its allegation that the Samsung kit infringes its intellectual property will be torn up.

Apple's patent, which covers tablet and phone touchscreens, was awarded last year. But Samsung maintains that the technology the patent seeks to protect was widely used long before Apple bosses filled in the patent application form.

The Galaxy Tab 10.1N was introduced in Germany in November 2011 to sidestep a court-imposed ban on the Galaxy Tab 10.1. Yesterday, the Dusseldorf Regional Court threw out Samsung's appeal against the original injunction. ®

Fantastic

Finally someone's calling time on this nonsense.

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does this mean

That the bs with patents awarded to Apple for prior art are finally going to start to be thrown out? Please say it is so.

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@ac - Don't just read it, pay *attention*!

My shiny new Android phone can cut'n'paste random text, so allow me to quote:

"The court decided that the Apple-owned patent on which the Mac maker had pegged its allegation that the Samsung kit infringes its intellectual property will be torn up."

This doesn't imply the revised Samsung tablet is okay, it implies the patent *itself* was bogus.

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Let the patents be ripped off!

Burn them in the streets! Dance around the fire!

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It's Apple's (infamous) "rubber band" patent...

...where the user sees a "bounce-back" effect (usually accompanied by some kind of faint, momentary 'glow' in the background) as the kinetic scrolling reaches page-end. See:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-01/apple-loses-german-court-bid-to-ban-samsung-galaxy-tab-10-1n-nexus-phone.html

http://www.osnews.com/story/25098/Apple_Scores_Meaningless_Dutch_Court_Victory_Against_Samsung/

This nonsensical waste of jurisprudential resources illustrates perfectly both the deplorable state of international patents in general, as well as the putrid depths which Cupertino are willing to plumb in defending their -- ahem -- superior innovation.

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