Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 banned in Europe

Apple has won what looks to be a major victory against its closest competitor, or at least, in the German courts.

It seems the German courts may have awarded a preliminary injuction against Samsung concerning its Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet. The injunction was granted to Apple following an alleged infringement of at least one of its European Community Designs with regards to the iPad. This is a tiny part of the global action being taken by Apple as they claim Samsung has copied many of their own designs.

As such this preliminary injunction bans the distribution of the products in question, even though no permanent injunction has yet been granted. This action seems to concern intellectual property, rather than patents, and as a results is enforceable across nearly the whole of the EU – except Holland currently. This of course means Samsung is now banned from distributing the Galaxy Tab 10.1 across Europe.

Although the Galaxy Tab 10.1 was first launched in February it is only very recently that it has become available to buy across Europe and was selling at a fast rate, even if a long way behind the iPad. This is of course a huge set back.

Samsung had this to say:

“Samsung is disappointed with the court’s decision and we intend to act immediately to defend our intellectual property rights through the ongoing legal proceedings in Germany and will continue to actively defend these rights throughout the world.

“We will take all necessary measures to ensure Samsung’s innovative mobile communications devices are available to customers in Europe and around the world. This decision by the court in Germany in no way influences other legal proceedings filed with the courts in Europe and elsewhere.”

Unfortunately for Samsung it certainly has the potential to kill off its entire generation of tablets and as such leading them to re-design the tablet completely to make it sufficiently different from the iPad.

2 Days ago I reported that Samsung were trying very hard to promote the Galaxy Tab 10.1.