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Judge: Samsung's Galaxy Tab Not As 'Cool' As iPad

By: Steve Henn // July 10, 2012
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Samsung won a victory in Britain Monday in its global patent war with Apple over the designs for its tablet computers.

A British judge ruled Samsung's Galaxy Tablets do not infringe on any of Apple's designs for the iPad.

Samsung, however, may have mixed feelings about this decision.

According to Judge Colin Birss, Samsung's Galaxy tablets are not cool enough to be confused with the iPad or violate any of Apple's design patents.

The ruling was a legal victory for Samsung but if this were a consumer review, it would have been a bloodbath.

Birss said Samsung's Galaxy tablets "do not have the same understated and extreme simplicity which is possessed by the Apple design."

He elaborated they are simply "not as cool."

"I've never actually seen a holding that one side's product is per se cool, until now," says Marty Schwimmer, an intellectual property law expert.

He says the judge may have handed Samsung a legal victory but he gave Apple a new advertising slogan, "Cool by judicial decree."

Apple and Samsung are still engaged in legal disputes over tablets around the world, but Schwimmer doubts Samsung will try to export the argument that it's simply not cool enough to have copied Apple's designs.

Copyright 2012 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

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