Apple: No Problem — The Apology Ads Can Come Out of That $1 Billion Damage Award

Apple, which has repeatedly accused Samsung of “slavishly” aping the design of its iPad, has been ordered to publicly apologize to the company it has branded as “a copyist.”

The U.K. Court of Appeals Thursday decided not to overturn a lower court ruling that will force Apple to publicly recant allegations that Samsung copied the design of the iPad for its own Galaxy tablet. First issued in July, the mandate requires Apple to post to its Web site, and in a number of British newspapers and magazines, a notice explaining that Samsung has not infringed its intellectual property with the Galaxy. Specifically, Apple must link to the original order from the front page of all its EU Web sites for a month, and publish notices in the Financial Times, the Daily Mail, the Guardian, Mobile Magazine and T3 magazine, “in a font size no smaller than Arial 14 on a page earlier than Page 6.”

Arial, not Helvetica? Cruel punishment, indeed. (Could have been worse; could have been Comic Sans.)

The court’s rationale for denying Apple’s appeal? To do otherwise would stifle competition.

“If the registered design has a scope as wide as Apple contends, it would foreclose much of the market for tablet computers,” the court wrote in its decision. “Alterations in thickness, curvature of the sides, embellishment and so on would not escape its grasp. Legitimate competition by different designs would be stifled.”