The U.S. court has preliminary halted sales of Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1" media tablet in the country as it preliminary found that the device infringes design patents of Apple. Samsung has already filed in the appeal, but in case it fails to convince the court that it did not copy design of Apple iPad, it will have to introduce revamped version of its Galaxy Tab 10.1", as it did in Germany.

"Although Samsung has a right to compete, it does not have a right to compete unfairly, by flooding the market with infringing products. While Samsung will certainly suffer lost sales from the issuance of an injunction, the hardship to Apple of having to directly compete with Samsung’s infringing products outweighs Samsung’s harm in light of the previous findings by the Court," said .S. District Judge Lucy Koh, reports 9to5Mac web-site.

The order should become effective once Apple posts a $2.6 million bond to protect against damages suffered by Samsung if the injunction is later found to have been wrong, reports Reuters news-agency.

Only about five hours after the judge made her ruling, Samsung Electronics America and other defendants and appealed the decision claiming that they did not copy design of the iPad when creating Galaxy Tab media tablets, reports FOSS Patents blog.

"Apple sought a preliminary injunction of Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1, based on a single design patent that addressed just one aspect of the product's overall design. Should Apple continue to make legal claims based on such a generic design patent, design innovation and progress in the industry could be restricted," a statement by Samsung reads.

Since the scope of a design patent is quite narrow, Samsung can develop new design around it, as it did in Germany with its Galaxy Tab 10.1N. Still, as the Galaxy Tab 10.1" is over one year old, Samsung may simply introduce a new generation of tablets on the U.S. market ahead of its own schedule and halt production of the 10.1 version to avoid financial impact.

Tags: Apple, Samsung, Galaxy Tab, iOS, Android