Is Samsung’s Galaxy Tab really an Apple iPad clone?

In a victory for Apple, a preliminary injunction has been granted to stop the sale of Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Germany. It could soon stretch EU-wide.

Apple accused Samsung’s new Android tablet, which launched in the UK on 4 August, of ‘slavishly’ copying the iPad 2 and ‘stealing’ the company’s ideas.

Although Apple has filed patent infringement cases against the Korean manufacturer, this injunction concerns something slightly different. This is specifically about the iPad’s design-related intellectual property, or what it looks and feels like, rather than any specific patent.

In short, Samsung’s tablet looks too much like an iPad. Apple even cites a similar ‘rectangular product shape with all four corners uniformly rounded’. Yet, it’s hard to see how you can avoid a tablet being a rectangular slab. So why isn’t Apple going after every other tablet manufacturer out there?

Why are you after Samsung, Apple?

The first answer to that question is, Apple isn’t only going after Samsung. Florian Mulluer at FOSS Patents today discovered that Apple is also suing Motorola for its Xoom tablet in Europe.

You might have thought the second answer was that Samsung is now Apple’s biggest tablet and smartphone competitor. But really, I think it’s because Apple genuinely believes Samsung has tried to duplicate the iPad as close as it possibly can.

However, even though Samsung has certainly kept its offerings close to the “look and feel” of Apple’s iPhone and iPad, is this enough to impose an EU-wide injunction? I don’t think so.

Is Samsung trying to pass off its tablets as iPads? No – they are quite clearly different products. Is Samsung trying to borrow a little bit of Apple’s tablet limelight? No doubt – but I don’t think it’s trying to create an iPad lookalike.

And that’s the crux – this design lawsuit seems a little too general. Can you really claim to own the intellectual property rights of a rectangular slab?

Isn’t a tablet just a tablet?

Moreover, Apple didn’t invent tablet PCs, nor how they look. Tablets were around for years before Apple entered the market. It might have a better claim for inventing the look of today’s smartphones, but even that’s kind of clutching at straws.

Tablets look like tablets and smartphones look like smartphones – in a competitive market products simply start to look like one another. It’s down to the manufacturer to differentiate themselves. Or as Glyn Moody (@glynmoody) told us on Twitter, ‘If Apple has a better product, it will win anyway’.

You don’t see microwave or fridge freezer manufacturers suing each other for making similar white box containers. Plus, in the tech market, most PCs and laptops look exactly the same – I couldn’t imagine Samsung going head-to-head with Dell over laptop design.

The way of the world among tech manufacturers, including Apple, is to watch the competition, steal ideas and try to better them. Even Apple boss Steve Jobs said in 1996, ‘We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.’

Apple might be a tad different from other tech manufacturers in that its brand feeds off the iconic and unique product designs it creates to differentiate itself from others. At least, that’s usually the case. To me, the iPad is neither unique or iconic. It’s black, it’s rectangular, it’s… a tablet PC.