Samsung Wins Major Case Against Apple in Netherlands

Remember when Apple got a German Court to put an injunction on the Galaxy Tab 10.1? But then they tried to do the same in Netherlands, and they failed? Apple appealed that case, and it looks like once again Apple’s case was struck down by the higher Dutch Court. This Court took into account 2 out of 6 prior art cases, which is more than enough to invalidate Apple’s patents.

Apple has been losing its cases left and right lately, and it doesn’t come as much of a surprise to me because in the end we’re talking about useless patents which didn’t deserve to exist in the first place. Just because some beaurocrat gave them to Apple, doesn’t mean they really deserved it.

In the end no one can really own an idea, because everything is based on prior knowledge. The Governments can, and should only give legal monopoly over a work for a limited period of time. The problem is that patents and inventions haven’t been defined very specifically for one, and second the patents are not rigorously researched before they are accepted by the Patent Office.

This is how we’ve gotten in this mess where every tech company has thousands of patents, that they can lose in Court, but until they get to that point they get to use them to threaten a competitor to either pay them, the way Microsoft does, or they try to get the judges to put injunctions on their products to delay their launch in the market.

Samsung has won quite a few cases lately, including the one in Australia. Hopefully it keeps up and Apple realizes that all these lawsuits are just a waste of time, even if they don’t care about the lost money.