Japan court rejects Samsung’s patent claim against Apple News
Japan court rejects Samsung’s patent claim against Apple
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[JURIST] The Tokyo District Court [official website, in Japanese] on Thursday rejected a patent infringement claim brought by Samsung against Apple [corporate websites]. Samsung accused Apple of stealing its data transmission technology [AFP report] used in Apple’s iPhone smartphones, but the court dismissed the challenge. The alleged patent infringement involved technologies for optimizing transmission and reducing power usage during data transmission, reducing data transmission errors, and tethering a phone to a PC to enable the latter to utilize the phone’s wireless data connection. The South Korean company had sought an injunction to prevent its competitor from manufacturing and selling its products in Japan. Samsung stated that it will take necessary steps to protect its intellectual property rights. It is unclear whether the company will appeal the recent decision.

This was the latest ruling in the global dispute between the two companies. In August of last year, the same court dismissed Apple’s claim [JURIST report] against Samsung holding that latter did not violate Apple’s patents of synchronizing music and video data. An appeal followed [JURIST report] two months later. Last month a judge for the US District Court for the Northern District of California [official website] ruled that Samsung did not willfully infringe [JURIST report] Apple’s patents. The judge’s ruling partially abrogates the jury verdict [JURIST report] finding that Samsung willfully infringed Apple’s asserted patents. However, the judge declined to overturn the jury’s findings on validity and infringement and also refused to grant Samsung a new trial on the grounds that the trial was allegedly manifestly unfair. In December Apple agreed to withdraw claims [JURIST report] against a Samsung product that Samsung asserts has never been sold in the US in the second of the two patent infringement cases taking place in the US District Court for the Northern District of California. In October a Dutch court ruled that Samsung did not infringe [JURIST report] on an Apple software patent. During same month, a UK court ruled similarly in case regarding Apple’s design patent [JURIST report].