A Dutch court has ruled that Samsung’s Galaxy tablets do not infringe Apple’s design patents on its iPad tablet. This new judgement follows Apple’s UK spanking over the same issue, and the Dutch judge referenced the UK ruling in his judgement.

In a statement to Reuters, Samsung twisted the knife:

We continue to believe that Apple was not the first to design a tablet with a rectangular shape and rounded corners and that the origins of Apple’s registered design features can be found in numerous examples.

While Germany has proved kinder to Apple’s design lawsuits, European courts in general have not been sympathetic to the U.S. corporations’ claims. And with U.S. courts having denied Apple’s calls for Samsung important bans, you might think that now would be a good time to seek patent peace.

Especially since Samsung unilaterally dropped all patent lawsuits against Apple in the UK, France, Italy, Germany, and, yes, the Netherlands.

Apple has of course already buried the hatchet with HTC over its Android phones, and Samsung has won the right to see many of the details of that agreement. Now if only Apple and Samsung could come up with something similar, we could report more actual technology stories and fewer riveting (not!) courtroom dramas.

photo credit: mac morrison via photopin cc