South Korea court rules Apple and Samsung violated each other’s patents News
South Korea court rules Apple and Samsung violated each other’s patents
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[JURIST] A South Korean court ruled Friday that Apple and Samsung Electronics [corporate websites] infringed on certain patents of the other, and the court banned the sales of some of the companies’ products in the country. The Seoul Central District Court held that Apple violated two Samsung patents [Bloomberg report] related to mobile-data transfer technologies, and Samsung infringed one Apple patent related to a specific touchscreen feature. As a result the court ordered Apple to stop selling the iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPad 1 and iPad 2, and Samsung to cease sales of the Galaxy S and SII, the Galaxy Tab, and nine other products. The order does not include the companies’ most recent devices like Samsung’s Galaxy S III phone and Apple’s newest iPad and iPhone, all of which were released after the lawsuits were originally filed. The companies must also pay damages to each other [AP report]—Apple about USD $35,000 and Samsung about USD $22,000. The companies have sued each other on four continents since April.

Apple and Samsung have been embroiled in continuous patent litigation in courts around the world. Earlier this month the US District Court for the Northern District of California [official website] denied a motion by Apple requesting that the court sanction Samsung by ruling in Apple’s favor in the ongoing $2.5 billion patent litigation between the two companies there. In July a UK court ruled [JURIST report] that Samsung tablets do not infringe on Apple’s design. Earlier in July a federal judge issued an injunction [JURIST report] against Samsung to stop the sale of its Galaxy Nexus smartphone in the US. A week earlier the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit had rejected [Bloomberg report; CAFC notice] Samsung’s appeal of the decision that remanded the case to the district court giving Apple another opportunity to ban Samsung’s Galaxy products in the states after it partially reversed [JURIST report] the district court’s refusal to grant a temporary injunction for Apple against Samsung. Apple’s request for a temporary injunction was denied [JURIST report] by the district court in December.

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