Update: Apple vs Samsung; order in the chaos.

We brought you the news the other day that Apple had successfully obtained an interim injunction against Samsung which prevented the sale of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Australia. Today further information has been released about what occurred:

• Apple sought to prevent Samsung launching any tablet in Australia until the results of its present patent lawsuit against Samsung had been determined. The Federal Court rejected this application.
• Apple requested that the Court order Samsung to turn over to Apple a sample of any tablet it proposed to launch in Australia, a request that was also refused.

“Samsung says Galaxy Tab 10.1, we say any tablet device,” Apple’s counsel told the court.

“We know what may well come is another version of the tablet. It’s up to our friends as to how they name it, whether they call it the Galaxy Tab 10.1 or 10.2 or 10.1s or whatever it happens to be.”

Samsung responded with:

“Your honour’s reasons dealt only with the 10.1 device … as a matter of principle your orders should only deal with the 10.1 device,” Samsung’s counsel said.

On the issue of Apple gaining early access to early Samsung tablets, Apple stated:

“Our submission is that direction which would provide us a copy of the version proposed to be launched 10 days in advance,” he said.

Samsung responded stating that such an order would be almost a rolling mandatory injunction that goes beyond the subject matter of the dispute.

“Why should Samsung be put in a different position to any other trader in the marketplace, which is to give advanced warning so as to confer some process of effective pre-approval in the hands of its competitor,” he said.

Justice Bennett’s final orders were that Samsung be prevented from launching “any version of the Galaxy Tab 10.1” until the completion of proceedings. Justice Bennett agreed with Samsung on the issue of the ‘rolling injuction’, stating that it did not seem warranted that this sort of order be made.

In granting the temporary injunction yesterday, Justice Bennett said that Apple had a prima facie case that Samsung had infringed two of its patents relating to touch screens and the gestures that control them. This is fairly bad news for Samsung, but they have to have expected this.

The next step in this saga falls on 1 November 2011, where a directions hearing has been set for the matter. Directions hearings are usually administrative, procedural-type matters, so it’s unlikely that anything much will result from this hearing, though a date for the matter to go to trial should be set either on this date, or shortly after it.