The South Korean technological company scored a victory when the Seoul court ruled that Samsung didn’t copy iPhone’s design on Friday. According to Reuters, this is one of the nine legal battles that Samsung has to carry against the American company, Apple, over patent issues.
The South Korean court in Seoul decided on Friday that Samsung is not guilty of the accusations that Apple has brought against it. After analyzing the case, judges reached the conclusion that Samsung did not copy the aspect and the feel of Apple’s iPhone. While the victory may mean a lot for the company, there are voices saying that Samsung won the legal battle on its territory, whereas the situation looks a lot worse in the other nine countries where the cases are unfolding.
This is, in fact one of the rare cases that Samsung has won against Apple. The South Korean company claims that Apple has infringed its wireless technology patent, whereas the latter requests $2.5 billion compensation because Samsung has stolen their iPhone and iPad technology. The South Korean court imposed a ban on iPads and smartphones produced by the two companies, without mentioning anything, however, about the two most popular phones, iPhone 4S and Samsung Galaxy S3.
Patent lawyer, Jeong Woo-sung told the press that he expected Samsung to win the case given that the legal battle took place on its own territory. The situation of the company is still unclear considering that the rest of the countries tend to support the American smartphone maker.
Based on the Seoul ruling, Apple is constraint to remove some of its products from the South Korean market, including iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPad 1 and iPad 2. According to the judges dealing with the case, Apple has infringed two Samsung patents, one of them for telecommunications technology. The court further denied Apple’s claim that Samsung stole its design. They justified their decision by saying that big square phone with rounded corners have existed previous to iPhones and iPads. In addition, the individual icons used by Samsung are not at all similar to the ones adopted by Apple.
