The UK Court of Appeal has ordered Apple to edit the statement acknowledging that Samsung did not infringe Apple's tablet design intellectual property and to publish it directly on its UK home page.
It must, furthermore, publish the statement on its website in at least 11-point text and keep it on its home page until 14 December.
saying that Samsung did not copy Apple's intellectual property in the design of its Galaxy tablet after losing a legal battle brought in the UK courts by Apple against Samsung. The judge in that case felt that Apple's action was so misguided that he ordered it to publish a statement disclaiming that Samsung had copied Apple.
The Court of Appeal in London has ordered Apple to simplify the statement and to publish it on its front page, rather than simply linking to it on an easily missed link on its home page, which the Court of Appeal had deemed to be non-compliant with the earlier ruling.
Judges Lord Justice Longmore, Lord Justice Kitchin and Sir Robin Jacob indicated that they were not pleased with Apple's failure to put a more straightforward statement on the site and ordered it to comply within 48 hours. They expressed increduality with the argument put forward by Apple's lawyers that it would take at least two weeks in order to carry out the order.
"Apple must now within 48 hours publish a correction on their homepage with a link to the corrected statement in not less than 11-point font," ordered the judges.
The court action in London formed part of a broader offensive by Apple against Samsung and other makers of Google Android-based smartphones and tablets. Apple claims that Android infringes a number of patents, and that Samsung has effectively copied Apple to produce devices similar to Apple's own products.
Samsung has vigorously denied the charges and the only court that has found decisively in Apple's favour so far has been the US District Court in the US – just 10 miles from Apple's own headquarters.
The statement that Apple had published was deemed non-compliant with the original Court of Appeal order because Apple had added text from the US judgment effectively rejecting the UK court judgment.
Apple has also been ordered to take out adverts to publish the statements in the Financial Times newspaper, The Guardian, Daily Mail, T3 magazine and Mobile magazine. Those adverts have yet to appear.
