Report: Court Decision on Apple-Samsung Legal Spat Leaks Secret
Information not for public consumption may have been inadvertently leaked when an American court decided Friday last week that Samsung Electronics may start selling its Galaxy product lines in the United States.
The ruling issued by United States, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh junked Apple's plea for an injunction that would bar the sale of Samsung's flagship smartphones and tablet computers in the lucrative U.S. market.
However, Reuters reported on Monday that Koh's 65-page ruling also divulge details about the Apple-Samsung spat that she does not want the whole world to see.
The slip, Reuters said, occurred when the decision was posted online, which can be easily copied and pasted, but was pulled down by the court staff after only a few hours.
In its place, according to the news agency, a redacted version was posted with new formatting that prevents liberal reproduction of the lengthy court ruling.
Measures being implemented by the court, experts said, are in line with standard procedures that protect the intellectual properties of companies involved in high-profile litigations, in this case Apple and Samsung.
Despite the flub, intellectual property expert Timothy Holbrook told Reuters that the trade secrets fiercely protected by the giant tech firms were not compromised as his review of the ruling showed that "there was nothing I saw that was shocking, just stuff that is not (otherwise) available to the public."
Holbrook allowed that much of the discussions and debates surrounding the Apple-Samsung legal spar centre on the Galaxy product designs that Apple claims were cloned by Samsung in producing its smartphones and tablets.
He added though that while the court erred in releasing the decision without striking out data that were not intended for the public eye, the leak did not disclose "much about the inner workings of the technology," as reported by Reuters.
Salient portion of Koh's ruling has indicated that Apple's request for an injunction was denied by the court as the American had admitted that the Galaxy product lines will not take away considerable shares from the market the company currently dominates.
More likely to absorb the impact of the Samsung Galaxy Tab market release, the court said, are rival Android products.
Tech experts have been heaping praises on both the Galaxy Tab 10.1 and its smartphone counterparts, labelling the products as likely serious competitors of the bestselling iPads and iPhones, which have sold millions of units since their debut.