The electronics giant Apple is reportedly looking to file a new patent infringement lawsuit against Motorola over its tablet computer design, fresh from a court victory in Germany against Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet.
After claiming that the design of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 is an imitation of the iPad, Apple recently succeeded in gaining a preliminary injunction against Samsung’s tablet in a German court. This means that it will be forced to withdraw the model from shelves in EU countries if the injunction is upheld.
There are now reports that Apple is looking to sue Motorola for similar patent infringement over the Motorola Xoom tablet. In fact, intellectual property analyst and blogger Florian Muller wrote that Apple filed a complaint against the Motorola tablet in the same court and at the same time as the Samsung complaint. Muller posits that Apple is attempting to assert its intellectual property rights and effectively eliminate the iPad’s main competitors.
According to reports, Apple and Motorola have been suing each other since October 2010 over as many as 40 patents registered in the US. This long-running dispute is likely to be extremely expensive for both parties, but it is likely that each is able to fall back on professional indemnity insurance to cover the costs.