Samsung has finally hit back at Apple by filing an appeal against a German court’s ban on sales of its Galaxy tablet computers. Samsung went on to accuse Apple of patent infringement in Australia. This would only deepen the dispute between the two smartphone and tablet manufacturers. The global battle has moved a step ahead and it seems like there would be no end result in the near future.
Yesterday, an appeal was seen filed by Samsung which had against a court ruling. The ruling had Apple winning the case and Galaxy Tab sales in Germany was temporarily blocked. A Seoul-based spokesman for Samsung, James Chung confirmed the story by phone today. It was noted that yesterday, Samsung had bombed Apple with yet another claim in the Federal Court of Australia. The cross claim had alleged that Apple’s iPad and iPhone had infringed seven patents, which relate to wireless communications standards. The confirmation for the second news was via an e-mail.
Briefing up a bit into the history of the dispute, Apple had accused Samsung of “slavishly” copying the iPad and iPhone and after winning the case, Apple was able to curtail the success of Galaxy sales in Australia and Germany. Winning the case in Germany, imposed a ban on not only Galaxy Tab 10.1, but even the Galaxy Tab 7.7, the latest version with a smaller screen than the Tab 10.1. Samsung even thus had missed out on displaying its product in the IFA consumer-electronics show in Berlin, which was held earlier this month. The lawsuits for the same are still pending in the U.S. and Asia.
However, a much confident Samsung, the Suwon, South Korea-based company after filing the suit in Australia against Apple said, “Samsung has a proud history of innovation in the mobile industry”. It even noted that there have been investments made on a continuous basis which were for R&D, design and technology, which has been the reason for the production of their innovative and cutting-edge mobile devices. There are attempts even being made to invalidate and revoke Apple patents, which have been used by the current tablet giant against Samsung’s Galaxy phones and tablets in Australia.
The filing of the appeal with a Dusseldorf court was followed by a Sept. 9 ruling to uphold the temporary nationwide sales ban on the Galaxy Tab 10.1, which was issued last month. Samsung had well, confirmed last month that this was coming sooner or later. Some might think its strange as Samsung has been strong in its cross claim wherein it files a suit against Apple for Apple’s own patent infringements. It believes that its actually Apple who infringes seven patents of Samsung with its iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4 and iPad products.
Each and every patent Samsung talks about here relates to the communication and quality of service of data over mobile networks, which includes the “apparatus and method for encoding/decoding transport format combination indicator in CDMA mobile communication systems” (Patent #2000058543), a method for high reliability sending of and receiving data over a mobile network (Patent #2005239657) and “turbo encoding/decoding device and method for processing frame data according to Quality of Service” (Patent #722598). Samsung has even focused on “Apparatus and method for controlling a demultiplexer and a multiplexer used for rate matching in a mobile communication system” (Patent #751376), method of ensuring enhanced quality of service over WCDMA (Patent #2005213087 and Patent #2005202512) and the sending or receiving of packets in predefined lengths (Patent #2006241621).