Apple is being forced to run a major marketing campaign to confirm that Samsung did not copy the iPad after losing an appeal which challenged the original ruling in July.
In the summer, Judge Colin Birss ordered Apple to buy ads in major UK newspapers acknowledging his ruling that Samsung did not infringe on Apple’s iPad design patents with its Galaxy Tab range.
He said it would “correct the damaging impression” that Samsung was a copycat.
Part the judge’s reasoning was that the iPad is “cool” but Samsung tablets, while “very, very similar” when viewed from the front, “are not as cool”. He added that they do not embody Apple’s sense of “extreme simplicity”.
The acknowledgement of the ruling, Birss said, had to be posted on Apple’s British website for six months and appear in the Daily Mail, the Financial Times and the Guardian, among other UK national newspapers.
Apple appealed against the ruling – and the humiliation of acknowledging it publicly – but now faces defeat, and appears to have little choice but to set the record straight.
It is the second significant victory for Apple in as many weeks. Last week it overturned a ruling in the US banning the sale of the Galaxy Nexus. It has also forced a U-turn on a US sales ban on the Galaxy Tab 10.1 and chalked up points in Europe, Australasia and Asia.
A Samsung spokesman said:”We continue to believe that Apple was not the first to design a tablet with a rectangular shape and rounded corners, and that the origins of Apple’s registered design features can be found in numerous examples of prior art.
“Should Apple continue to make excessive legal claims in other countries based on such generic designs, innovation in the industry could be harmed and consumer choice unduly limited.”
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