Samsung Electronics Co Ltd on Thursday lost its bid to ban sales of Apple Inc’s older iPhone and iPad in South Korea after a court dismissed a lawsuit claiming the U.S. firm had infringed on three of Samsung’s mobile patents.
The lawsuit was part of the tech giants’ global courtroom battle dating to 2011, when Apple first sued Samsung for copying the look and feel of its iconic iPhone and iPad.
A judge at the Seoul Central District Court said Apple products such as the iPhone 4S, iPhone 5 and iPad2 did not violate Samsung patents on short message display methods and messaging grouping features.
The court ruled against a sale ban on the products and threw out Samsung’s claim for 100 million won ($95,100) in damages.
“We are glad the Korean court joined others around the world in standing up for real innovation and rejecting Samsung’s ridiculous claims,” Apple Korea spokesman Steve Park said.
Samsung said it would thoroughly review the ruling before deciding to whether to appeal.
“As Apple has continued to infringe our patented mobile technologies, we will continue to take the measures necessary to protect our intellectual property rights,” Samsung said in a statement.
In a separate ruling in August last year, the same court ordered Apple to pay Samsung 40 million won in damages for infringing two of the South Korean firm’s wireless technology patents.
In the same ruling, Samsung was fined 25 million won for violating a patent relating to the so-called bouncing-back function used when scrolling electronic documents.
Thursday’s ruling comes after a Mannheim court in Germany dismissed Apple’s claim that Samsung infringed on a utility patent that pertains to a multi-language function used in smartphones.
Apple and Samsung have gone to trial twice in the past two years in a San Jose, California federal court, where juries have awarded Apple roughly $930 million in damages.
Shares in Samsung, worth around $221 billion, closed down 0.7 percent on Thursday, versus a 0.5 percent drop in the wider market.
The war between iconic actors Segun Arinze and Emeka Ike seems to have no end in sight. In a recent interview, Arinze had said Ike should stop embarrassing the Actors Guild of Nigeria by parading himself as its president. According to Segun: ‘Emeka should grow up. As far as I am concerned, Ibinabo Fiberesima is the bonafide president. Even in the recent judgement that came out recently telling us to return to the status quo, what does it mean? We were told to go back to the way we were. There was no time Emeka Ike was pronounced the president of AGN. Let him bring out the copy of the judgement and show us if he is man enough. He should wake up and stop embarrassing the guild.” Well, these words did not go down well with Ike who believes Segun Arinze “is an illiterate who should have been in jail.” He told Saturday Beats: “I heard Segun Arinze was interviewed and he said so many things about me and nobody asked me for my own side. I don’t think it was a balanced report. Se...
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