Apple Wins in Dutch Court, Blocks Samsung Phone Shipments

Samsung Apple

The Apple-Samsung lawsuit has been grabbing headlines left and right over the last few months. The action has especially heated up over the past few days, as Samsung tried to prove to a Dutch court that it’s not copying Apple’s products.

But even with their Kubrick evidence, the judge found the Korean company to be in violation of Apple’s patents. The ruling bans Samsung from selling several devices, including the Galaxy S and Galaxy S II, in the European Union…

As FOSS Patents explains, the ruling only covers countries in the EU where the patent is considered valid. There are many countries that Apple hasn’t taken the necessary steps to file patents correctly, including Estonia and Greece.

Estonia or not, the invention in question has to do with viewing photos on a touchscreen device. In particular, Apple’s patent describes browsing through images on a device by swiping the screen.

Folks hoping to snag a new Galaxy handset in Europe shouldn’t be too concerned though. Samsung has said that it has more than enough time to modify its software, as the ban won’t start until mid-October.

But as Gizmodo points out, why didn’t Samsung implement this modification in its photo browsing system in the first place? Isn’t saying that the problem can be fixed, admitting that there was a problem to begin with?

I’m getting as sick of patent lawsuits as the next person, but in this case it seems to be spurring innovation, rather than hurting it. Apple simply wants people to come up with their own ideas. Just look at Windows Phone 7.

Microsoft literally went back to the drawing board and came up with WP7’s tile interface. The UI is completely original, and could never be mistaken for iOS. Should Google try the same approach with Android to halt further litigation?