Apple Lawsuit Fails Against NT-K

In the patent war that Apple is waging against a number of competitors, there are victories and defeats. Today is certainly a day of defeat as the NT-K tablet (from a Spanish manufacturer Nuevas Tecnologías y Energías Catalá) has won in court and is now seeking damages from Apple, which had previously successfully blocked the NT-K tablet sales.

Interestingly, the NT-K creators say that they were not the only target of Apple’s lawsuit, but that others have preferred giving up rather than defend themselves. In the meantime, there are more pending lawsuits elsewhere around the world, and so far Apple has mostly won based on “technical merit” (against the Galaxy phones in Europe) rather than based on the idea that others copy its designs.

Obviously, we’ve seen that rulings can vary from country to country, but is it the beginning of the end for this “design-based” patent war in which Apple claims that it has invented the tablet as we know it and that no-one else should be able to design a device that looks like a rectangular display?