There’s just no stopping Apple and Samsung when it comes to their patent-based legal battles. For several years now, courts around the world have seen lawyers representing both firms marching through their doors, supporting evidence in one hand, appeal application form in the other. Sometimes it goes Apple’s way. Sometimes it goes Samsung’s. On Thursday, in a court on the latter’s home soil, Apple was the victor.
A Seoul court threw out Samsung’s demand that sales of an older iPhone and iPad should be banned in the country after it was decided the Cupertino company had not infringed three particular patents belonging to the Korean tech giant.
The patents related to “short message display methods and messaging grouping features,” Reuters reported, with Samsung hoping to win a ban on sales of the iPhone 4S, iPhone 5 and iPad 2, together with damages of 100 million won ($95,100). In the end, it came away with nothing.
“We are glad the Korean court joined others around the world in standing up for real innovation and rejecting Samsung’s ridiculous claims,” Apple spokesman Steve Park said in response to the court’s judgment.
Following the decision, Samsung issued a statement saying, “As Apple has continued to infringe our patented mobile technologies, we will continue to take the measures necessary to protect our intellectual property rights.” In other words, an appeal could be on the cards.
Samsung’s compensation claim of $95,100 looks paltry when you consider it was last year ordered by a court in the US to pay Apple somewhere in the region of $1 billion for patent violations linked to a number of the Cupertino company’s mobile products.
Just last month Samsung returned to court in California in a bid to reduce a portion of its costs after the 2012 jury was found to have erroneously calculated $400 million of the awarded damages, but the case ended with the Korean tech firm still facing a $290 million bill, plus the $600 million or so already decided.
Unable to settle their differences out of court, the two companies will be presenting further patent-related cases to a US judge in March next year. And we thought Tim Cook said he hates litigation….
