US firm Apple has lost its patent case against South Korean firm Samsung Electronics in London’s Court of Appeal after a judge ruled that the Galaxy tablet does not infringe the iPad’s design.
The court backed a previous decision by a High Court judge in the UK who ruled that Samsung’s Galaxy tablet did not infringe upon Apple’s patents.
The court added that there were similarities between the two devices but that the South Korean firm had not infringed Apple’s design, in part because its products were "not as cool".
Apple, which can still appeal to the Supreme Court, needs to run ads saying Samsung had not infringed its patents as per the UK court order it had received in July this year.
Earlier in October 2012, the US Court of Appeals had overturned a ban on sales of Samsung‘s Galaxy Nexus phone, sending the case back to the district court in California for reconsideration.
Samsung, earlier this month, had claimed that Apple’s new iPhone 5 infringes eight of its patents associated with implementation of LTE technology.
In August this year, a South Korean court ruled that Apple and Samsung breached on each other’s mobile computing patents and banned both companies from selling some of their products in the country.
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Apple had won about $1.051bn in a patent suit, claimed to be one of the biggest patent cases in decades, against Samsung in August this year.
Since April 2011, both the companies filed about 30 lawsuits against each other in at least 12 courts, nine countries, and four continents which involve smartphone and tablet patents.
