Judge Grants Apple Preliminary Injunction Against the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in the United States

With Google I/O just around the corner, this is not what Samsung and Google need. Reuters is reporting that Judge Koh has granted Apple a preliminary injunction against the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in the United States. She says Apple made a very strong case on the matter and that further sales of Samsung’s tablet would significantly harm Apple’s sales of the iPad, as “design mattered more to customers in making tablet purchases.” She also claims that the Galaxy Tab 10.1 is “virtually indistinguishable” from the iPad.

In order for the injunction to take effect, Apple must first pay a $2.6 million bond to compensate Samsung in case the injunction is reversed.

One thing to keep in mind is that the Galaxy Tab 10.1 is already being phased out, as Samsung has released the Galaxy Tab 2 10.1.

A little confused as to what all of this means? I was, so I reached out to our own legal expert Lynn Anderson for some explanation. This is what he had to say:

An injunction is a court order that prevents (or bans, or prohibits) an individual (or a company) from performing a specific act or behavior (or if it is a company as in Samsung, it may prevent it from selling a specific product). Since this case is in Federal Court, the jurisdiction is the United States.

This Samsung/Apple case is a preliminary injunction – a motion filed relatively soon after the case was filed wherein Apple asked the Court to issue an injunction to prevent Samsung from selling the infringing device (in this case, the Galaxy Tab 10.1) while the case is pending.  Apple presented certain evidence that Samsung had infringed on its patents that the Court agreed with  Again, this is basically at the beginning of the case.  If, after many rounds of discovery, Samsung is able to prove Apple wrong and that the Tab 10.1 does not infringe upon Apple’s patents, the “injunction bond” – in this case, $2.6 million – is paid to Samsung as “damages” for the time period that Samsung was not allowed to sell the device.  A more in-depth hearing will be held later for Samsung to provide evidence as to how much revenue they lost during the injunction. If Apple wins, they get the bond back.