Apple has lost an appeal in the UK, wherein a UK judge ordered the iPhone-maker to publicly apologise to Samsung.
In July, a UK judge ruled that Samsung’s Galaxy tablets do not copy the iPad, saying that the Korean firm’s tablets were not cool and did not have the “extreme simplicity which is possessed by the Apple design.”
The judge also ruled that Apple post a number of ads, admitting that Samsung did not infringe on its patents. Apple appealed the ruling, but a London High Court overruled the appeal.
Originally, the judge ruled that Apple post an ad on its website “in a font size no smaller than Arial 11pt”, within seven days and should stay on Apple’s website for a total of six months.
Aside from the apology Apple was ordered to make on its website, the judge has also ordered the Cupertino firm to post a public apology on magazines and newspapers. It was ordered to post the ads “on a page earlier than page 6” in publications such as the “Financial Times, Daily Mail, The Guardian, Mobile Magazine and T3 magazine”. The ads should be printed at least in Arial 14pt.
Samsung sent a statement to CNET UK saying, “We welcome the court’s judgment, which reaffirmed our position that our Galaxy Tab products do not infringe Apple’s registered design right.”
It adds, “We continue to believe that Apple was not the first to design a tablet with a rectangular shape and rounded corners and that the origins of Apple’s registered design features can be found in numerous examples of prior art.”
Ending the statement, the S3-maker says that if Apple continues to make “excessive legal claims in other countries based on such generic designs, innovation in the industry could be harmed and consumer choice unduly limited”.
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