T-Mobile has joined in with Verizon in asking a U.S. court to not grant Apple’s request for an injunction against Samsung’s Android smartphones and tablets in the U.S. The company filed friend-of-the-court documents arguing that such an injunction would harm T-Mobile and consumers alike.
The move is merely the most recent in the increasingly complex, convoluted, and extensive patent battle between Apple and Samsung. Both companies have accused the other of patent infringement, but the momentum in the U.S. and in Europe currently lies with Apple. The iPad and iPhone maker has been granted injunctions barring the import of Samsung’s Android devices in Germany, and is deep into the process of getting the same result in Australia, though that isn’t a done deal yet.
In the U.S., a federal judge is considering a similar request based on Apple’s claims that Samsung’s Android products infringe on several of Apple’s patents.
On Monday, Verizon, one of Apple’s iPhone partners, filed its own friend-of-the-court documents, arguing that Samsung’s product line is key to Verizon’s development of an 4G LTE network, and that Verizon and U.S. customers alike would be harmed by the injunction.
T-Mobile is not an iPhone carrier currently, but its parent company, Deutsche Telekom, is in Europe. T-Mobile, which is in the process of being bought by the original iPhone carrier, AT&T, said in its filing that, “The timing of such an injunction on two popular consumer products that will help anchor its 2011 holiday sales would unnecessarily harm T-Mobile and thousands of U.S. consumers,” according to Bloomberg.
T-Mobile told reuters that it respects intellectual property, but that a wholesale injunction barring the import of Samsung’s devices, “is a drastic and extraordinary measure.”