Apple"s ongoing patent lawsuit against Samsung has caused a court to rule against Samsung and thus keep its Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet from being sold in most of Europe. The Telegraph web site reports that the Regional Court of Dusseldorf in Germany has granted Apple its injunction against Samsung that will only allow its recently launched tablet product to be sold in the Netherlands. Samsung can appeal the court"s decision, but until that appeal is heard the injunction stands, meaning that the Galaxy Tab 10.1 will have to be removed from store shelves in most of Europe. The article states that before the injunction was granted the tablet was the fastest selling device of its type since the launch of Apple"s own iPad 2 in the UK.
Apple filed a lawsuit against Samsung earlier this year saying that the company has violated Apple"s patents on the design and the user interface for several of Samsung"s products including the Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet. Earlier in August that same patent debate kept Samsung from selling the Galaxy Tab 10.0 in Australia. So far Samsung has yet to comment on this latest court decision. The big question is whether or not Apple will attempt to bring the same kind of injunction against the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 to the US. The tablet started selling in US stores last June in 16 GB and 32 GB versions and more recently Verizon Wireless began selling versions of the tablet with its LTE-based 4G wireless service inside.