SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea's Samsung won a home court ruling
in its global smartphone battle against Apple on Friday when judges in
Seoul said the company didn't copy the look and feel of the U.S.
company's iPhone, and that Apple infringed on Samsung's wireless
technology.
However, in a split decision on patents, the panel
also said Samsung violated Apple technology behind the bounce-back
feature when scrolling on touch screens, and ordered both sides to pay
limited damages.
The Seoul Central District Court ruling called
for a partial ban on sales of products including iPads and smartphones
from both companies, though the verdict did not affect the
latest-generation phones — Apple's iPhone 4S or Samsung's Galaxy S3.
The
ruling affects only the South Korean market, and is part of a larger,
epic struggle over patents and innovation unfolding in nine countries.
The biggest stakes are in the U.S., where Apple is suing Samsung for
$2.5 billion over allegations it has created illegal knockoffs of
iPhones and iPads.
The Seoul ruling was a rare victory for
Samsung in its arguments that Apple has infringed on its wireless
technology patents, which previously have been shot down by courts in
Europe where judges have ruled that they are part of industry standards
that must be licensed under fair terms to competitors.
"This is
basically Samsung's victory on its home territory," said patent attorney
Jeong Woo-sung. "Out of nine countries, Samsung got the ruling that it
wanted for the first time in South Korea."
The ruling ordered
Apple to remove the iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPad 1 and iPad 2 from store
shelves in South Korea, saying that the products infringed on two of
Samsung's five disputed patents, including those for telecommunications
technology.
The court also denied Apple's claim that Samsung had
illegally copied its design, ruling that big rectangular screens in
cases with rounded corners had existed in products before the iPhone and
iPad.
"It is not possible to assert that these two designs are
similar based only on the similarity of those features," the court said
in a ruling issued in Korean that was translated into English by The
Associated Press. It also said individual icons in the Samsung products
do not appear similar to the icons Apple used in the iPhone.
But
the court ruled that Suwon, South Korea-based Samsung had infringed on
one of Apple's patents on the feature that causes a screen to bounce
back when a user scrolls to an end image. The court banned sales of
Samsung products using the technology, including the Galaxy S2, in South
Korea.
Court spokesman Kim Mun-sung said the court's ruling was
to take effect immediately, although companies often request that
sanctions be suspended while they evaluate their legal options.
Nam Ki-yung, a spokesman for Samsung, said the company welcomed the ruling.
"Today's ruling also affirmed our position that one single company cannot monopolize generic design features," he said.
Apple did not respond to multiple calls seeking comment.
The
court also ordered each company to pay monetary compensation to its
competitor. Samsung must pay Apple 25 million won ($22,000) while Apple
must pay its rival 40 million won.
South Korea is not a big market for Apple, and the ruling is not likely to have a big impact on jury deliberations in the U.S.
However,
some industry watchers expressed concern over the South Korean ruling
to protect industry standard patents. They say the decision could invite
a trade war by giving Samsung and fellow South Korean company LG — both
industry standard patent holders — more room to block rivals' entrance
into South Korea if they don't agree to licensing terms.
"It
would mean that foreign companies would either have to bow to Samsung's
and LG's demands ... or stop selling in Korea," said Florian Mueller, a
patent expert in Munich, Germany who has been closely following the
case.
Courts in Europe, including Netherlands, France, Italy and
Germany have rejected similar claims by Samsung that Apple violated its
wireless patents, with judges arguing that the patents have become part
of industry standards. Standard-essential patents are a crucial
technology for new players to make products compatible with the rest of
the market and must be licensed under fair and reasonable terms.
Europe's
anti-trust regulator launched an investigation earlier this year into
whether Samsung was failing to license those patents under fair and
reasonable terms.
In Friday's ruling, the South Korean court said Samsung did not abuse its market power as an industry standard patent holder.
Apple
filed suit against Samsung in San Jose, California, in April 2011,
alleging that some of the South Korean company's smartphones and
computer tablets are illegal knockoffs of Apple's iPhone and iPad.
Samsung denies the allegations and argues that all companies in the
cutthroat phone industry mimic each other's successes without crossing
the legal line.
Cupertino, California-based Apple is suing
Samsung for $2.5 billion and demanding that the court pull its most
popular smartphones and computer tablets from the U.S. market, making
the case one of the biggest technology disputes in history.
Jury
deliberations in San Jose began Wednesday after three weeks of
testimony. The case went to the jury after last-minute talks between the
companies' chief executives failed to resolve the dispute.
Shortly
after Apple filed its suit in the U.S., Samsung filed a complaint in
South Korea against Apple for allegedly breaching its telecommunications
patents.
The battle is all the more complex as Apple and Samsung
are not only competitors in the fast-growing global market for
smartphones and tablet computers, but also have a close business
relationship.
"This is going to go on and on and on," said Barney
Loehnis, head of mobile for Asia at public relations firm Ogilvy. "This
will never change because the sorts of patents that they're fighting
over are such a fundamental essence of using these devices that they're
always going to be leapfrogging one over the other."
Samsung, the
world's biggest manufacturer of memory chips and liquid crystal
displays, supplies some of the key components that go into Apple
products, including mobile chips that work as a brain of the iPhone and
the iPad.
The South Korean firm overtook Apple in less than three
years in smartphone markets. In the second quarter of this year,
Samsung sold 50.2 million units of smartphones, nearly twice as much as
Apple's 26 million units, according to IDC.
Despite the ruling that is widely seen as Samsung's victory, Samsung's share fell 0.9 percent in Seoul.
____
AP business writer Kelvin Chan in Hong Kong contributed to this report.
