Garmin's Products Get To Stay On The Shelves In Europe

from the competition-is-good dept

Thu, Nov 2nd 2006 10:29pm — Mike Masnick

A few weeks ago we noted how silly the fight between Garmin and TomTom had become over the navigation device market. After each side had filed a few different patent infringement suits against each other, TomTom filed suit in Europe trying to get an injunction to get Garmin's products off the shelves, claiming that Garmin's device copied TomTom's design. Of course, the timing was important, since the goal was to get them off the shelves just as everyone began their holiday shopping. Luckily, the court recognized how ridiculous this was and has tossed out the request for an injunction, while also ordering TomTom to pay the court costs. The court noted that despite TomTom's claims that Garmin had copied its design, the devices were easy to distinguish. There are still the other patent lawsuits pending, but why can't the two companies just compete directly in the market, rather than wasting all this time and money fighting each other in court?

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Evil_Bastard, 3 Nov 2006 @ 5:57am

Garmin has been around a while, and they have a less fruity name.
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chris (profile), 3 Nov 2006 @ 7:07am

what about the commercials?
tom tom has retrded commercials, do they ahve a patent on those as well because they could probably get a lot of money from the beer companies for infringing on their "retarded commercials" patent.
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Sanguine Dream, 3 Nov 2006 @ 7:40am

I know!

There are still the other patent lawsuits pending, but why can't the two companies just compete directly in the market, rather than wasting all this time and money fighting each other in court?

Because actually competing would be too fair. Companies now have so much money that it is cheaper to sue the competition out of existence than it is to acutally try to out perform them. It's the corporate way.
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