Edible Apple

About 3 weeks ago, Apple won a preliminary injunction against the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1.

Explaining her ruling, US District Judge Lucy Koh stated,

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.

Since the, Samsung has tried twice to get the preliminary injunction stayed, falling short both times. Most recently, Samsung filed a motion seeking a stay with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit only to have it rejected.

Florian Mueller writes,

The opinion published today does not provide much detail. It does, however, recall that “[t]o prevail [on a motion to stay], a movant must establish a strong likelihood of success on the merits or, failing that, must demonstrate that it has a substantial case on the merits and that the harm factors militate in its favor”. Samsung’s motion, which even contradicted Samsung’s own public statements that it wasn’t really harmed by the injunction, failed to meet those requirements.

And so Samsung will have to wait and hope for a favorable outcome in its upcoming trial with Apple if it wants to get the Galaxy Tab 10.1 back on the market.

But as Mueller notes, the Galaxy Tab 10.1 is the least of Samsung’s worries. After all, they have a more recent Galaxy Tab tablet already out on the market. Further, what Samsung is most likely more worried about is the preliminary injunction pertaining to its Galaxy Nexus smartphone.

Samsung’s resurgence has been on the back of its smartphone business, and with the Galaxy Nexus positioned as the flagship Ice Cream Sandwich device, that injunction affects Samsung’s bottom line a whole lot more.