Apple’s Australian suit vs. Samsung grows to 278 patent claims
Apple’s lawsuit against Samsung in Australia expanded Friday from three claims of patent infringement claims to 278, according to reports.
The suit also grew from Apple singling out just one device -- Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 -- as a patent infringer to a total of 10 devices that are allegedly breaking the law, according the news sites of The Australian and TheNextWeb.
The staggering expansion caught Samsung off guard, according to a spokesman for the South Korean electronics giant, who said Samsung was “only given days notice that Apple’s legal bid against the company had been amended to include over 200 claims against smartphones and tablets that haven’t even launched in the country,” TheNextWeb said. “As a result Samsung said it would not be able to file a defence against the claim until mid-May.”
Samsung has also sued Apple in Australia over alleged patent infringement claims, with the suits and countersuits between the two tech giants pertaining to touchscreen technology, the look and feel of products and even how devices connect to the Internet.
The Australian patent fight is just one of many between the two companies. From October to December of last year, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 was placed under a temporary sales ban in Australia because of the lawsuits. Previous to that, Samsung has agreed to voluntarily pull the Galaxy Tab 10.1 from Australian retail shelves in August.
Due to similar suits in Germany, the Galaxy Tab 10.1 is under a sales ban there as well, though Apple did lose a request for a ban on the redesigned Galaxy Tab 10.1N and the Galaxy Nexus smartphone this week.
Apple last week was denied a requested sales ban on the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in the Netherlands, where the two companies are locked in a patent battle.
In January, Apple filed two new patent suits against Samsung in Germany, seeking a ban on 10 Samsung phones and five tablets. In December, a U.S. district court in San Jose denied Apple’s request for a ban on the Galaxy Tab 10.1 before a July trial on Apple’s lawsuit against Samsung in that court. Other patent suits between the rivals have been filed across Europe and Asia.
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