Judge says Nook origin still in dispute

Spring Design's hopes of quickly banning Nook sales in its lawsuit against Barnes & Noble were dashed today after a San Jose US District Court denied a request for a preliminary injunction. The move will let Barnes & Noble keep selling the e-readers until at least the final decision. In its ruling, the court denied that there was any clear indication that Barnes & Noble was damaging sales of Spring Design's Alex to other companies and that there was a "genuine dispute" as to whether the bookseller had stolen any ideas.

Hearings are expected to move quickly ahead of the actual trial, whose central complaint accuses Barnes & Noble of using meetings with Spring Design to copy the basic concept of Alex and sell it separately without giving its creator proper credit. Both devices are unusually similar with a main e-paper display, a secondary color touchscreen and Android at their roots.

A successful injunction would still have relatively little effect as Barnes & Noble has had to repeatedly delay new orders into mid-January, giving time for other companies to unveil their own devices based on the Alex template. [via Engadget]

By Electronista Staff