In an interesting turn of events in the ongoing legal battle between Apple Inc. (AAPL) and Samsung a U.K court ordered the Cupertino based company to publish notice saying that Samsung didn’t copy the iPad.

AAPL lost a patent lawsuit against Samsung in a London court on July 9 and Judge Colin Birss ordered a ruling which stated that Samsung’s Galaxy tablets don’t infringe Apple’s iPad design. The Judge has now ordered Apple to post the notice on it’s U.K website for a period of six months and also run advertisement in several newspapers and magazines to correct Samsung’s impression in the eyes of the customers.

Bloomberg was first to report on the developing story and has published a statement by Richard Hacon, a lawyer who is representing Apple in the U.K courts.

The order means Apple will have to publish “an advertisement” for Samsung, and is prejudicial to the company, Richard Hacon, a lawyer representing Cupertino, California-based Apple, told the court. “No company likes to refer to a rival on its website.”

The latest development in the international patent lawsuits between the two tech giants comes as an embarrassment to Apple as the company has repeatedly said that Samsung ‘slavishly’ copied it’s iPad and iPhone. Apple is free to appeal the decision and will most likely do so.

Competition in the tablet market is heating up as Android market share is on the rise and Galaxy Tablets finally beginning to see some success. Apple is clearly in the lead with its iPad being a major success in all major international markets however, the ruling by U.K judge could put some pressure on Apple and think of alternate ways to tackle and defend it’s intellectual property rights.

It will be interesting to see how Apple lawyers respond and appeal this decision in the U.K. This ruling could also be seen as first major victory for Samsung. The South Korea-based company had to face injunction against its Galaxy Tab in Australia and the U.S.

Earlier today a German court ordered two patent rulings which involved Apple Inc. (AAPL) and Samsung. In Mannheim Regional Court Judge Andreas Voss tossed the third lawsuit in a row in which Samsung claimed that AAPL infringed on 3G/UTMS patent.

Samsung has already announced that it will appeal the dismissal of its case. In addition to the ruling in Apple’s favor the German court, according to Florian Mueller of FOSS Patents, tossed one of two suits filed by Apple against Samsung over slide-to-unlock.

Apple has seen some success in its legal battle against Android as the Cupertino, Calif. based company won preliminary injunctions against Samsung, however most of them were subsequently lifted.

Samsung still hasn’t been able to enforce any intellectual property right anywhere on this planet against Apple

Mueller on his blog explains that today’s decision does not reduce chances of Apple’s success in other slide-to-unlock lawsuits.

[T]he whole issue here that made Apple lose, for the time being, the slide-to-unlock patent case against Samsung is just the interpretation of certain key terms (“predefined”, “displayed”, “path”). The slide-to-unlock utility model has a large number of claims, and some of those are much broader and don’t have the related limitations.

This week turned out to be great for Apple as the company scored significant victories in German courts. In one of the lawsuits the court ordered that Motorola Mobility cannot enforce standard-essential patent injunction against Apple during its appeal. This suggests that Apple has strong chances in succeeding. We recently reported that in another lawsuit against Motorola, Apple won German injunction over its Photo Gallery patent which enables Apple to enforce the ruling and ask for any infringing product to be destroyed.

Apple Inc. (AAPL) earlier today won an injunction against Motorola in Germany over the photo gallery patent. The judgement was pronounced on Thursday at the Munich I Regional Court by Judge Dr. Peter Guntz.

AAPL and Motorola have been involved in a number of lawsuits and this recent victory over yet another patent allows Apple to enforce the ruling which could force Motorola to destroy any infringing products. Motorola could very well continue to sell its smartphones and tablet by seeding a software update to resolve the infringing feature.

It’s interesting to note that Apple has won this injunction against all accused products which include two smartphones and the Xoom tablet. If Motorola decides to issue a software update to avoid infringing on Apple’s patent then it could possibly impact the user experience who are used to certain behavior when they scroll lists or manage / browse photo galleries.

Florian Mueller, an intellectual property activist-turned-analyst, on his blog FOSS Patents reports that:

The glass is clearly more than half-full for Apple in this case (and even more so when considering that Apple also won the drastic remedies of destruction and recall).

Apple continues to be aggressive in its approach to fight against the Android platform which the Cupertino, Calif. based company claims to infringe on its many patents. In Steve Jobs’ biography it was revealed that Jobs considered Android a “stolen product” and that he would “spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong.”

Today’s ruling is the second injunction Apple has won against MMI in Germany so far. Those are the first two Apple v. Motorola casees that came to judgment in Germany.

In August last year Google announced that it would acquire Motorola for $12.5 billion and the move was largely seen as an attempt to acquire a stronger patent portfolio. However, with Apple winning injunction in recent lawsuits it remains to be seen if Google’s decision of acquiring Motorola would play out well when the deal finally comes through.

It is worth noting that due a Motorola patent ruling which is under appeal forced Apple to discontinue the “push” feature in iCloud and MobileMe email service within Germany. Users can still receive and send emails however, they would have to manually “fetch” the emails. Apple is appealing the decision and believes “this patent is invalid”.

A civil suit against Google, Apple, and many other tech giants originally introduced more than 5 years ago, may continue to further processing. U.S District Judge has ruled that the case has grounds to continue because “they still have an antitrust claim” according to Bloomberg.

[Judge] Koh didn’t take issue with the allegations about the agreements between individual companies, Joseph Saveri, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said in an interview after the hearing. Instead, Koh has questions about “how it ties together,” or claims of an over-arching conspiracy between all the companies, he said.

The five year old case, according to the lawsuit, emerged and is still running strong on the grounds that “no solicitation” agreements appeared in 2005 between Apple, Adobe, Google, Intel, Intuit, Lucasfilm, and Pixar. These agreements prevented companies from contacting employees at other companies in order to steal or “poach” that particular employee for their own company’s benefit.

However, the agreement still allows employees to apply for other positions on their own. The Justice Department investigated the agreements in 2010 and eventually came to an agreement, with companies assuring that none of the company’s would enter into a no-solicitation agreements for five years. This new civil-suit is a class-action civil suit filed by employees who suggested that they were harmed by anti-competitive actions of defendant companies.

There are no dates or times as to when the case will resume in court or when action will be taken against the companies, however, this case brings to light the risks of tech giants attempting to poach employees.

{via Mac Rumors}

FOSS Patents were quick to spot the changes and noted:

The original complaint specifically accused the following products of infringement: “the Samsung Captivate, Continuum, Vibrant, Galaxy S 4G, Epic 4G, Indulge, Mesmerize, Showcase, Fascinate, Nexus S, Gem, Transform, Intercept, and Acclaim smart phones and the Samsung Galaxy Tab tablet.”

The amended complaint accuses all of the above plus the Droid Charge, Exhibit 4G, Galaxy Ace, Galaxy Prevail, Galaxy S (i9000), Gravity, Infuse 4G, Nexus S 4G, Replenish, Sidekick, Galaxy Tab 10.1, and Galaxy S II (aka Galaxy S 2). It also specifies the accusation against “Showcase” products, naming the Showcase i500 and Showcase Galaxy S.

It’s interesting to note that the amended filing uses aggressive language and alleges that Samsung “has been even bolder” with “products that blatantly imitate the appearance of Apple’s products to capitalize on Apple’s success”. Apple in its filing repeatedly mentions that when iPhone was introduced it offered unique features which no other company offered.

Prior mobile phones were often bulkier and contained physical keypads. Some had a rocker-style navigation button and sets of buttons for numbers and calling features. Others had a front panel with a partial or full QWERTY keyboard and a screen. None had the clean lines of the iPhone, which immediately caused it to stand apart from the competition.

Samsung has been equally aggressive in fighting back and the chief of mobile division at Samsung, J.K. Shin said:

We have used many similar designs over the past years and it [Apple’s allegation] will not be legally problematic.

This legal battle might just get bigger and we’ll just have to wait to see if the companies reach a settlement or continue to fight.

We recently reported that Samsung filed a notion requesting the court to ask Apple to show prototypes of iPhone 5 and iPad 3 as a part of the “discovery process”. Apple earlier this year filed a lawsuit against Samsung alleging that it had copied the look and feel of iPhone. During a recent interview with WSJ the chief of mobile division at Samsung, J.K. Shin said:

“We didn’t copy Apple’s design,” Mr. Shin said. “We have used many similar designs over the past years and it [Apple’s allegation] will not be legally problematic.” He suggested the scale of the lawsuit could grow, though he didn’t provide more details.

Even though Apple thinks Samsung has violated its “valuable intellectual property rights” the Korean giant feels that it won’t be a major cause of concern however, Mr. Shin did not comment on future implications.

The legal battle between Samsung and Apple continues to grow and doesn’t show signs of an early settlement. The legal spat is expected to continue for at least a few years until some substantial outcome can be seen. Such lawsuits are very common among big corporations and specially when it comes to technology companies where patent lawsuits are very common.

It will be interesting to see if Apple can indeed prove it in the courts that Samsung’s products are very similar to Apple’s design. The Cupertino based company basically feels that Samsung’s product could trick a customer to think that it was actually Apple’s new iPhone. When I visited a local mobile store recently to buy a protective screen cover for my Samsung phone the sales guy actually asked me if it was the iPhone 4. And obviously one can’t deny that Samsung’s UI and hardware design does look very similar to Apple’s design.

Apple recently filed a lawsuit against Samsung for copying their products, user interface, packaging design and technology which are in “violation of Apple’s valuable intellectual property rights.”

Samsung isn’t the only company against which Apple has filed lawsuits, the Cupertino outfit is currently fighting in court against several other Android based handset manufacturers including HTC and Motorola.

We recently reported that a federal judge ordered Samsung to provide Apple with pre-production samples of a number of devices which are not yet available in the market and gave the company 30 days to comply with the order so that Apple Inc. may decide an injunction on the infringement.

Now, This Is My Next reports that Samsung has filed a notion asking Apple to hand over the iPhone 5 and iPad 3 prototypes to the company as a part of the “discovery process.”

It’s important to note that Apple requested for the products which had already been widely publicised as Samsung gave away 5,000 Galaxy Tab 10.1 to Google I/O attendees. However, Samsung’s request is based on a lot of assumptions as the company is assuming that iPhone 5 and iPad 3 could “possibly” be similar to Droid Charge and Galaxy Tab 10.1 which will hit the market around the same time as Apple’s next gen products.

This move if in Samsung’s favour would allow the company to “evaluate any possible similarities so they can prepare for further potential legal action from Apple.”

Samsung’s asking for a court order requiring Apple to produce “the final, commercial versions” of the next-generation iPhone and iPad and their respective packaging by June 13, 2011, so it can evaluate whether there’ll be confusion between Samsung and Apple’s future products. If the final versions aren’t available, Samsung wants “the most current version of each to be produced instead.”

Samsung says it has to see the next-gen iPhone and iPad because it believes those are the products that will actually be on the market against future Samsung devices, so it has to be prepared for Apple’s potential motion for a preliminary injunction. That’s kind of a stretch: Apple can’t really file for a preliminary injunction based on potential confusion with unannounced, unreleased products, so Apple’s lawyers will almost certainly focus on confusion with the company’s existing products.

Samsung has additionally promised to abide by the rules applicable to Apple and only the lawyers will have access to the prototype devices.

Apple has always been and continues to be very secretive about its future products and Samsung is clearly basing their assumptions on rumours which suggest that Apple is indeed working on next gen iPhone and iPad.

This is certainly turning out to be more interesting that we initially thought and it remains to be seen if the latest developments in this case lead to any possible out-of-court settlement or if Apple continues to aggressively fight it out in the court.

Earlier this year, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) filed a lawsuit against Samsung, claiming patent and trademark infringement and that the “user interface and innovative style” was used by Samsung in its Galaxy line of smartphones and tablets.

Earlier today Courthouse News Service reported that a federal judge has tipped the lawsuit in the favor of AAPL and has given Samsung 30 days to provide Apple Inc. with samples of a number of unreleased hardware models of their tablets and phones so that Apple may decide on an injunction on the infringement.

Samsung Electronics was told Wednesday to fork over five of its not-yet-released mobile phones to Apple. Sitting in Federal Court in San Jose, Judge Lucy Koh ruled that Apple deserves the quick production of cell phone samples three months earlier than usual in the litigation process, though she drew the line at requiring testimony from Samsung executives.

“Apple has demonstrated good cause for some, limited expedited discovery,” said Koh. “While Apple has not yet filed a motion for preliminary injunction, courts have found that expedited discovery may be justified to allow a plaintiff to determine whether to seek an early injunction,” said Koh.

The Samsung models that Apple is allowed to evaluate include the Galaxy S2, Galaxy Tab 8.9, Galaxy Tab 10.1, Infuse 4G, and the Droid Charge.

These Samsung models have yet to be released although Samsung has argued that examination of the production samples, may not necessarily reflect final shipping models. But Koh ruled out Samsung’s argument as the company had already publicized its products and also promoted their latest tablet by giving away 5,000 Galaxy Tab 10.1s to attendees at the Google I/O conference earlier this month.

Interestingly, one name that is conspicuously absent from all of these lawsuits is Google, who, as you know, makes the Android Operating System for smart-phones. However, it is worth noting that HTC is seen by many as Google’s proxy in one of these upcoming legal sparring matches, before the main event(s). And Apple (AAPL) is indeed suing HTC in a bid to ban its Android based smartphone imports to the US which Apple alleges infringe it’s patents. And, yawn, HTC is counter-suing.

On the table right now though is a continuation of the ITC suits between Nokia and Apple. Nokia is still the largest handset maker in the world, but its market dominance is coming under pressure from Apple and Google. So much so that Apple allege that Nokia is now fighting back by copying many of their ideas in order to create a competing product to the iPhone. Something which if Apple is able to convince the ITC of may enable them to ban Nokia’s imports into the US. In truth though, this is as likely as hell freezing over in.

Nokia’s perspective is that Apple has also stolen ideas from them (a proven market leader), and so should not be throwing stones from a legal position inside of a glass house. So they are in turn going after Apple to protect their own IP, and also point out that Apple actually imports its phones to the US from abroad too!

So what is this all about?

Apple’s ultimate aim is to dominate the smartphone market, and to eventually even stifle it’s direct US based competition from Google’s Android and the handsets that it runs on that are imported to the US by companies like HTC, which Apple also contests violates its US patents.

“Other companies must compete with us by inventing their own technologies, not just by stealing ours,” Bruce Sewell, Apple’s general counsel, said in a Dec. 11, 2009, statement on the Nokia case.

But then Apple’s strategy is basically the same one that Google, HTC, Microsoft and just about every other smart phone manufacturer also has. And these are all huge companies with massive resources. So something somewhere is going to give at some point. And when that happens it is quite likely that the various companies involved will simply work out some kind of patent licensing deal.

But it will get bloody first.

Why they can’t just sit down and compromise now is something that we will all have to just accept, because none of these companies are going to give an inch in what is ultimately going to have to be a mediated situation.

Of course the devil is always in the details, and Apple is intent on going to this particular courtroom gun fight with some serious muscle, and the aim of emerging on top of the scrum of warring companies with the best deal it can walk away with.

Accordingly Apple has hired lawyers who are equally impressive in their credentials as the company they are now working for. In fact a couple of the lawyers Apple now has on retainer have even made Apple pay out big bucks to other rival firms before!

Business Week report that :

Apple has hired some of the nation’s top patent lawyers as outside counsel. They include Robert Krupka of Kirkland & Ellis, who negotiated a 2005 settlement in which Apple agreed to pay $100 million to Creative Technology Ltd., maker of the Zen music player; William Lee of WilmerHale in Boston, who successfully represented Broadcom Corp. in its fight against Qualcomm; and Matt Powers of Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP, who successfully defended the patent on Merck & Co.’s biggest product, the $4.7 billion-a-year asthma drug Singulair.

Apple have also recently brought more in house legal muscle on board in the form of Noreen Krall, previously the chief IP counsel of Sun Systems and a staff attorney at IBM.

For those of you with long memories you may find some similarities between what is happening now in the smartphone market place and what went on a handful of decades ago in the personal computer market.

Who is most likely to emerge triumphant from this round of the smartphone wars? Have your say in the comments.