The previously announced Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 with seven-inch diagonal screen will be joined by two more models. Their screens will have a diagonal of 8 and 10.1 inches, and both will have a screen resolution of 800x1280 pixels. 8 inch Samsung Tab 3 is envisioned as a lightweight device for reproduction of multimedia content, primarily written.

Although Samsung and Apple are waging a global patent war against each other most eyes are fixed on the US where a group of nine people will decide who gets to file for appeal. However, while we all wait for that exciting moment in history to happen there is another case that is going on in South Korea between these two competitors. The case covers the same basic patents between the two companies and the same phones so the details are a little boring. What was interesting is that the South Korean courts decided to wait on a verdict while the US trial was underway. Many thought they were going to wait until a US verdict was reach and then hand down a judgment that matched. However, it just seems they may have wanted to hear all of the facts in the US case before making a decision.

The fate of Samsung and Apple are in the hands of the jury now… not really. You see no matter the outcome of this particular part of the greater drama the losing side will appeal. This is both a good and a bad thing for both companies. In the case of Samsung losing verdict allows them to be able to bring more witnesses and to also find some of Apple’s patent invalid. For Apple a loss would be a little more damaging, but they are already working on improving their reputation with improvements in their partner Foxconn’s factories. This is the problem that we face right now with the US legal system. It is sort of backwards and in many cases does not understand the items that it is supposed to govern and rule on.

After going through the news and editorials about the Apple V Samsung case we have found something very interesting in Apple’s attack methods. One of the lead pieces of evidence for their alleged consumer confusion is the number of returns of Samsung products to stores like Best Buy etc. Apple would like you to believe that customers mistakenly picked up a Galaxy Tab when they meant to get an iPad and then returned it after realizing it was not an iPad. It is a piece of logic that in any other place in the world or with almost any other judge would have been thrown out as preposterous, but for some reason Judge Lucy Koh is letting this stand. You see Apple’s logic and claim here is seriously flawed and here is why.

For some time we have said that companies that file bad lawsuits or that continue to make obviously incorrect claims in the market should have consequences. Apple is probably one of the worst with their continuous stream of allegations against Google, Samsung,  HTC, LG, and pretty much everyone else that they “slavishly copy” Apple and do not invent their own technology. This has been repeated so often that it is boring and even cursory glance at the any two products (go ahead and pick two) will show significant differences. There is almost no chance of the wide spread consumer confusion that Apple is trying to claim on a daily basis.

The US Patent system, both the methods used for filing and also the methods used to protect IP is becoming a joke. We have seen as patents are being filed in greater frequency with very little other than wording to differentiate them with other products, but broad enough to make sure the filing company can still sue someone else that makes a similar product. On top of that we have judges that are not qualified technically to preside over the cases they are being overwhelmed with. To say that the system is broken would be like calling a nuclear explosion a “bang”.