A German court affirmed a preliminary ruling on Thursday that determined Samsung’s reworked tablet does not look so much like the iPad that it should be banned. The ruling comes as another blow to Apple, which is in the midst of several other lawsuits with rival smartphone and tablet makers over intellectual property. The court said that there were “clear differences” between the Galaxy Tab 10.1N and the iPad, reports Reuters. Apple and Samsung have been tangled in what seems like an endl...

The Munich Regional Court in Germany on Wednesday rejected Apple’s request to ban Samsung’s local subsidiaries from selling the Samsung Galaxy Nexus smartphone and Galaxy Tab 10.1N tablet. “Samsung has shown that it is more likely than not that the patent will be revoked because of a technology that was already on the market before the intellectual property had been filed for protection,” Judge Andreas Mueller said. In September, Samsung’s local retailer arm was banned from selling...

Nokia Siemens Networks recently announced that it will cut as many as 1,200 jobs in Finland and lay off another 2,900 workers in Germany as it begins to restructure the company. Both Nokia and Siemens originally tried to sell the joint venture, which has struggled to report a profit, but gave up those plans this past summer. The move is expected to save €1 billion per year, Reuters said Tuesday. Nokia Siemens Networks is the second larger maker of phone network equipment in the world behind Ericsson, and t...

One week after dismissing Samsung’s first German patent infringement lawsuit against Apple, a German court has also rejected a second suit, reports Florian Mueller of FOSS Patents. Judge Andreas Voss of Germany’s Mannheim Regional Court on Friday addressed Samsung’s argument that certain 3G and UMTS technology in Apple’s iPhones infringes the South Korean company’s patents. The Judge dismissed these claims early Friday morning, however he did not immediately offer an explanation for ...

Apple is warring with Samsung yet again in Germany. The iPhone maker filed another suit against Samsung and this time is arguing that the slide-to-unlock feature on the Galaxy Nexus infringes on an intellectual property right called a “utility model,” patent expert Florian Muller wrote on his website FOSS Patents Friday. Apple reportedly registered the utility model in 2006 and said it wasn’t able to use its utility model against Samsung’s Galaxy Nexus in court yet because the phone ...

Apple has filed a new complaint targeting 10 Samsung smartphones that allegedly infringe the Cupertino-based company’s design patents. The suit was filed in the Dusseldorf Regional Court, with Apple also filing a separate suit citing five Samsung tablet models. Last month, Samsung introduced the Galaxy Tab 10.1N that featured a new bezel and a slightly modified design. Apple filed a new complaint seeking to ban sales of the tweaked model, but the Dusseldorf court said it was unlikely to grant an inju...

Samsung is reportedly planning to launch a tweaked version of its Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus tablet in Germany. The Galaxy Tab 7.0N will likely offer many of the same features of the Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus but with design changes that could help it avoid litigation from Apple. Apple and Samsung have been butting heads in courtrooms around the globe and Apple last year successfully banned Samsung’s local subsidiaries from selling the Galaxy Tab 10.1. As a result, Samsung launched the Galaxy Tab 10.1N, which has al...

HTC now has the upper hand in a legal battle with German patent firm IPCom. IPCom won a lawsuit in 2009 related to UMTS technology under which it believed it had the right to ban German retailers from selling HTC smartphones. HTC, however, argued that IPCom’s case was no longer valid and ignored the injunction entirely. As a result, IPCom recently tried to take the law into its own hands by suing more than 100 retailers that continued to sell HTC phones. ”Since this deadline has passed without an...

Whether or not competing products do in fact infringe on Apple’s patents, Apple may have another reason to attack its rivals so aggressively in France and Germany: the company is losing ground. New data from Kantar Worldpanel released on Thursday shows that while the launch of the iPhone 4S was a huge hit in the United States and the United Kingdom, smartphone users in key markets like France and Germany were seemingly not as impressed with the handset. Read on for more. (more…)

Samsung’s tweaks to the original Galaxy Tab 10.1 weren’t enough to satisfy Apple’s legal team. Apple successfully banned Samsung’s German subsidiaries from selling the Galaxy Tab 10.1 after it accused the South Korea-based company of patent infringement. Samsung responded by releasing a modified Galaxy Tab 10.1N tablet it believed had addressed all of Apple’s concerns. Unfortunately, Apple isn’t satisfied with the changes and it wants to ban Samsung from selling the new t...

IPCom has reportedly moved to ban HTC from selling smartphones in Germany. HTC lost a patent lawsuit to IPCom in 2009 and recently decided not to file an appeal against the ruling, likely in an effort to avoid further litigation it might have faced from a ruling on two additional patent cases. HTC may ignore IPCom’s request to stop selling smartphones because it believes IPCom’s lawsuit is no longer valid. According to BBC, HTC has argued that the German Federal Patents court ruled that IPComR...

HTC’s German subsidiaries may soon be barred from selling smartphones in the country following HTC’s recent decision to forgo an appeal to a patent lawsuit won by IPCom in 2009. The ban could spell trouble for HTC smartphone sales during the holiday season. “We will likely use the right awarded by the courts, likely resulting in HTC devices disappearing from shops during the crucial Christmas season,” IPCom said, noting that it hopes to enforce an injunction against HTC’s device...

FOSS Patents is reporting that Motorola has won an injunction related to a patent infringement lawsuit in Germany, Europe’s largest market. According to the ruling by a Mannheim Regional Court, Apple is barred from selling any mobile device that infringe on two Motorola Mobility patents filed in April of 2003. Motorola is also reportedly owed for past damages. One of the patents in question relates to GSM, UMTS and 3G, and it is unclear what the second patent covers. If Motorola Mobility actually has wo...

More iPhone rumors! New listings on German wireless carrier Vodafone D2′s website add weight to the notion that Apple is planning to unveil only incremental updates at tomorrow’s event. Found by German iPhone fan site ifun, Vodafone’s Elgato Tivizen DVB-T receiver page now lists several new Apple phones as being compatible with the TV receiver. The most notable, of course, are white and black 8GB iPhone 4 models and 16GB, 32GB and 64GB iPhone 4S models, also listed in both black and white. ...