U.K. courts says Apple must post public notice on its website that Samsung didn’t copy its iPad

Earlier this month, Apple lost a ruling in the High Court of England & Wales, that said that three Samsung Galaxy Tab models were different enough from the iPad not to have infringed on its design. This ruling is now being backed up by the court, who is ordering Apple to publish a notice on its U.K. website and in U.K. newspapers telling the public that the Galaxy tablets didn’t copy its designs, reports Bloomberg.

The report has the details of the order:

The notice should outline the July 9 London court decision that Samsung’s Galaxy tablets don’t infringe Apple’s registered designs, Judge Colin Birss said. It should be posted on Apple’s U.K. website for six months and published in several newspapers and magazines to correct the damaging impression the South Korea-based company was copying Apple’s product, Birss said.

The order means Apple will have to publish “an advertisement” for Samsung, and is prejudicial to the company, Richard Hacon, a lawyer representing Cupertino, California-based Apple, told the court. “No company likes to refer to a rival on its website.”

The ruling earlier this month dismissed Apple’s claims that the Samsung tablets copied their designs, saying that they were “not as cool” as the iPad anyway. The Knight Ridder tablet concept from way back in 1994, along with about 50 other tablet-like examples, were used to display that tablets are basically ‘prior art’. The back of the tablets was noted to be significantly different, especially.

At that time, Samsung stated that “Apple’s excessive legal claims based on such a generic design right can harm not only the industry’s innovation as a whole, but also unduly limit consumer choice.”

Frankly, I can’t wait to see how Apple is going to word this thing. I’m sure there’s some required language, but I’d bet they come up with something sweet. I just hope that “not as cool” makes it in there somewhere.