Will Apple publicly accept that Samsung did not copy iPad design?

Tech giant Apple has launched a bid to overturn a court ruling that orders it to run an embarrassing national newspaper advertisement admitting that Samsung did not unlawfully copy its iPad design.

A British High Court judge had ordered Apple "to put advertisements in the relevant newspapers and to put a statement on their United Kingdom website", admitting its Korean rival had not infringed the iPad design.

Apple, however, argued that, in finding Samsung had not infringed its design, the trial judge had placed too much emphasis on differences between the design of the back of Galaxy Tab range and the back of the iPad, the Telegraph reports.

Michael Silverleaf, representing Apple, said that the differences highlighted in the ruling amounted only to "decoration", that should not carry significant weight in judging whether Samsung copied the design or not.

Whereas the back of the iPad is almost featureless, Galaxy Tabs have a separate, different coloured section along one edge that contains the camera and flash.

"I say he was wrong to take these aspects [of colour] into account at all. This [the iPad] is a design about shape. You don't make a non-infringing design by making the same shape and decorating it," the paper quoted Silverleaf, as saying.

He said that more weight should have been given to the similarities between the front of the iPad and the front of Galaxy Tabs.

Silverleaf pointed out that both designs have a thick black border around their rectangular touch screens.

"Too much weight was given to the features of the back and far too little weight to the features of the front," Silverleaf said.