Sometimes when you win, you really lose, as Apple may have discovered in a German court this week. Other times, you really wish that whole email thing wasn’t so permanent, as it appears Apple and a gang of other tech giants are going to discover in what may be an incredibly expensive class-action lawsuit.
It’s another tough week for Cupertino in the courtroom. Cue the dun-dun and lets review those gavel bangs.
FOSS Patents reports that an appeals court in Germany has upheld a preliminary injunction against the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, which was originally granted to Apple last fall. In additional, the court found that the Galaxy Tab 8.9 also falls under the injunction.
The original ruling, ordered last August and upheld in September, was based on a violation of one of Apple’s Community designs -- a European version of a design patent. Samsung appealed to the Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court, and while that court did uphold the injunction, they did so based on a violation of German unfair competition law, not a design violation.
Sorry about that "unfair" thing... we'll work on that as we keep selling these.
The distinction is somewhat of a win for Samsung; although the injunction continues to block the sale of the Galaxy 10.1 and 8.9 in Germany, Apple really needed the injunction to be upheld based on design, so that Cupertino could attempt to replicate the decision globally. According to Florian Mueller of FOSS Patents, the "German unfair competition law is pretty unique," and won’t help Apple in courtrooms in any other country.
So, even though Samsung technically lost the appeal, it succeeded in defeating Apple's design right, denying Cupertino significant leverage other lawsuits still pending around the world.
That potential class-action lawsuit we covered last week; the one where all the high tech workers in Silicon Valley accused Apple and a number of other tech companies of conspiring to fix their wages and prevent them from changing jobs? You know, the one with all the nasty sounding emails form C-level employees at those companies describing back-room deals with each to control employees? That one is going to trial.
U.S. District Judge Lucy H. Koh ruled a few days ago that the companies listed in the complaint -- including Apple, Google, Adobe, Intel, Pixar, and Lucasfilm -- must face a private class-action lawsuit claiming the violated antitrust laws. Koh’s ruling requires the companies to produce documents detailing the agreements, and allow lawyers for the plaintiffs to take depositions.
This could work out really, really well for us.
According to Bloomberg, Koh did not have a problem with the companies potentially making individual agreements with each other, but was concerned with "how it ties together" into a possible conspiracy between all of the companies. The case, which could produce damages that total hundreds of millions of dollars, is filed as In Re High-Tech Employee Antitrust Litigation, 11-2509, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Jose).
Adrian writes the weekly Law & Apple column for MacLife.com. Follow him on Twitter, subscribe to him on Facebook.
