During the last evening, those from Reuters announced that Apple won an important battle in the legal war against Samsung because a US judge gave them the right to impose a preliminary sales ban against the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. This ban involves the blocking of sales of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 throughout the US, and it can only be imposed after Apple pays a $2.6 million bond that "protects" Samsung in the event that today's decision is overturned by another judge.
Although Samsung has a right to compete, it does not have a right to compete unfairly, by flooding the market with infringing products. While Samsung will certainly suffer lost sales from the issuance of an injunction, the hardship to Apple of having to directly compete with Samsung's infringing products outweighs Samsung's harm in light of the previous findings by the Court.
It's no coincidence that Samsung's latest products look a lot like the iPhone and iPad, from the shape of the hardware to the user interface and even the packaging. This kind of blatant copying is wrong and, as we've said many times before, we need to protect Apple's intellectual property when companies steal our ideas.
The decision to offer the ban comes after a request filed by Apple a few months ago when the company from Cupertino claimed that the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 infringes patents regarding the design and interface of iDevices. Apple won a similar ban in Germany, and there Samsung had to redo the design of the Galaxy Tab to put the tablet back on sale. Of course, we are talking in the US about the ban on selling the Galaxy Tab 10.1 model 1, because the second model of the tablet has not yet been attacked by Apple.
Apple's victory is extremely important because it comes to a very large market, it comes to its home country and there are chances that it will not be the only one against Samsung.
UPDATE: Samsung has already appealed against the decision of the American court, so Apple cannot impose the ban for now.
