It was announced by a Dutch judge on Thursday that the ruling on the attempts by Apple to get some of the products of Samsung Electronics banned from being sold in the Netherlands and the whole European Union will come before the 15th of September. These lawsuits are a part of a bigger battle between the two giants in the mobile market across the world.
An injunction over three patents, design infringement and copyright has been filed by Apple in the court of Hague in order to stop some of Samsung’s mobile devices from being sold in the country and also to block them from being distributed throughout the EU and the Netherlands.
The port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands is the largest port in the whole of Europe and serves as the central point for imported goods to enter into the European Union. Apple has alleged that the Galaxy series of mobile handsets and tablets from Samsung are slavish copies of Apple’s own iPhone and iPad, in what has turned out to be a major global battle over intellectual property.
The South Korea based Samsung has been dragged to court by Apple in various countries, including Australia and the US. This Monday, Samsung was temporarily banned from selling the Galaxy Tab in much of the EU by a German court.
The same Galaxy tablet, which is set for a release in most of Europe and is being touted as the biggest competitor for Apple’s iPad, is central to the court case in the Netherlands. Rutger Kleemanuns, the lawyer for Apple, told the court that the devices are plainly copied from Apple designs, and that is the reason for the lawsuit.
Lawyers from both the companies presented arguments concerning the alleged infringement of patents this Thursday, covering the appearances and the design similarities of both the tablet devices.
According to Florian Mueller, an agency of the European Union grants the rights to intellectual property and thus they can be enforced throughout the EU. He said that the issues which were discussed in Hague concerned broader subjects than those which Apple alleged Samsung of when it requested for a preliminary injunction in Germany.
Bas Berghuis van Woortman, the lawyer for Samsung, gave arguments suggesting that the case which was heard by the court on Thursday, especially concerning the patents, was much too complicated for the jurisdiction of the court to decide on.
