A South Korean court ruled Friday that technologyrivals Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. both infringed on each other'spatents, and ordered a partial ban of their products in South Korea. Each sidewas also ordered to pay limited damages.
The Seoul Central District Court ordered Apple to remove the iPhone 3GS, iPhone4, iPad 1 and iPad 2 from store shelves in South Korea, ruling that theproducts infringed on two of Samsung's telecommunications patents.
But in a twist, the court also ruled that Suwon, South Korea-based Samsung hadinfringed on one of Apple's patents related to the screen's bounce-backability. The court banned sales of the Galaxy S2 and other products in SouthKorea.
Sales of devices recently released by Samsung and Apple — including the iPhone4S and the Galaxy S3 smartphones — were not affected.
The court also ordered each company to pay monetary compensation to the other.Samsung must pay Apple 25 million won ($22,000) while Apple must pay its rival40 million won.
Legal experts not directly involved in the case said the ruling was favorableto Samsung.
"This is basically Samsung's victory on its home territory," saidpatent attorney Jeong Woo-sung. "Out of nine countries, Samsung got theruling that it wanted for the first time in South Korea."
The lawsuit is part of global, multibillion dollar fight between the world'stwo largest smartphone makers that has been unfolding in nearly a dozencountries.
However, the biggest stakes are in the U.S., where the two companies are lockedin an epic struggle over patents and innovation in a federal court in San Jose,California.
Cupertino, California-based Apple sued Samsung in 2011 in the U.S., allegingthat some of the South Korean company's smartphones and computer tablets areillegal knockoffs of Apple's iPhone and iPad. Samsung denies the allegationsand argues that all companies in the cutthroat phone industry mimic eachother's successes without crossing the legal line.
Apple is suing Samsung for $2.5 billion and demanding that the court pull itsmost popular smartphones and computer tablets from the U.S. market, making thecase one of the biggest technology disputes in history.
Jury deliberations began Wednesday after three weeks of testimony. The casewent to the jury after last-minute talks between the companies' chiefexecutives failed to resolve the dispute.
Shortly after Apple filed its suit in the U.S., Samsung filed a lawsuit on itshome turf and in other countries, accusing Apple of breaching itstelecommunications patents.
The battle is all the more complex as Apple and Samsung are not onlycompetitors in the fast-growing global market for smartphones and tabletcomputers, but also have a close business relationship.
Samsung, the world's biggest manufacturer of memory chips and liquid crystaldisplays, supplies some of the key components that go into Apple products.