Apple and Samsung have probably been more bitter adversaries in courtrooms than even the race for market domination. their patent wars have led to litigations and injunctions throughout the world, from Australia to Germany, and now in the US.

Now, Apple has just won an appeal from a federal court in the US that could lead to the Samsung’s flagship tablet, the Galaxy Tab 10.1, being taken off American store shelves by June. a California court had found Apple’s claims of iPad design patent violations leveled against the Galaxy Tab invalid a couple of months back, but the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit chose not to uphold the Californian court’s ruling. “Circuit Judge Kathleen O’Malley argued that the CAFC should have reversed the decision in order to provided Apple with immediate injunctive relief in light of the irreparable harm it is suffering. but the majority of the judges saw no reason to believe that there will necessarily be delay, or if there is delay that it will be unjustifiable.” - Florian Mueller, in his blog for FOSS Patents. Apple wants the ruling judge, Lucy Koh, to expedite the ruling for the injunction, as there had been multiple hearings about this matter already at the end of last year. there have been settlement talks ordered between the two companies, but it’s an almost foregone conclusion that nothing much will come out of them. If the injunction is enforced after all, Samsung will have to change the design of its premier Android tablet. Samsung already has previous in this regard, as it had been forced to modify the Tab 10.1 in Germany as well (thanks to a separate injunction filed through Apple), and create what it called the ‘Galaxy Tab 10.1N’ instead. [via Apple Insider]

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