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You’d think Samsung would have waited until it was out of the San Jose courtroom with Apple, where it is currently locked in battle over charges of infringing patents, before it launched this.

In downtown Sydney, the Korean electronics giant has just launched the first of its new line of “experience” retail stores — an experience not unlike one you’d have in say, oh, I don’t know, an Apple store.

To be clear, there are other prominent downtown Samsung retail stores in the world — one in New York at the Time Warner center, for example. But the Sydney store that opened Thursday is a new style entirely. Let’s take a peek inside:

What Is Copying Anyway?

Now to be fair to Samsung, it’s hard to patent the kind of similarities here. A store is a store. Just because it happens to be spacious, spartanly attired in wooden tables, generously staffed with smart young people in blue outfits — well, we doubt Apple has a patent on all of that. (We know they have patents on the external design of the Apple store.)

But they could win the legal battle on this one without a shot being fired, and still lose the wider PR war. The store launch may have come too late to influence the jury in San Jose, but there’s still the jury of public opinion. Which is, arguably, what you need to win in a retail environment.

So let’s get the conversation started. Watch the video of the store from Australian TV above, then take a look at this classic video from 2001, where a relatively young-looking Steve Jobs introduces the original Apple store, complete with original iMacs:

What’s your vote? Would you shop at a version of that Samsung Store near you? Can it compete? Let us know in the comments.

Read more: http://mashable.com/2012/08/23/samsung-copy-apple-store/