German court sets date for Samsung tablet ban appeal

Samsung will put forward its appeal against a Europe-wide ban on the sale of its Galaxy Tab 10.1 Android tablet in ten days' time, the court that issued the temporary injunction against the device on behalf of Apple has said.

On Friday, the Düsseldorf district court said the appeal would be heard on 25 August. The statement in which it said so also confirmed that Apple had won the injunction against the Galaxy Tab 10.1 on 4 August, and that Samsung had before this date applied to head off potential injunctions against the tablet.

When the injunction was granted, Samsung told some news outlets such as Reuters that it had had no warning that Apple was trying to gain a ban on the tablet. However, it withdrew this paragraph from statements it sent to others, such as ZDNet UK.

The ban was granted to protect Apple's 'Community design' on its iPad devices — this refers to the appearance of the device rather than its functionality. These quasi-patents are enforceable everywhere in Europe, even when backed up by just one European district court.

The injunction against Samsung's sale of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 applied everywhere in Europe except for the Netherlands. There, a separate case is underway — the court will rule by 15 September, but Samsung has escaped a temporary injunction in the Netherlands until that point.

Even the general European ban on the device's sale is only temporary, but the case might take as much as a year to be fully decided.

Samsung and Apple have been locked in legal battles since April last year, when Apple accused Samsung of "blatant copying" in the design of its Android tablets.