Samsung pushes ahead with Apple patent suits

People who pre-ordered wait in line to get Apple’s new iPad outside a store in Seoul on Friday. (Park Hae-mook/The Korea Herald)

Korean company files eight more patent infringement suits in California


Samsung Electronics said Friday it filed another suit against its rival Apple Inc. at a Californian court this week, requesting that the U.S. firm stop selling the new iPad, Mac laptop and Apple TV.

The Korean IT behemoth has filed eight different patent infringement cases against Apple, seen as a move taken to fight Apple’s U.S. federal lawsuit against Samsung earlier in February.

The lawsuits included Samsung’s claims that Apple infringed its patents in its services such as iTunes and iCloud.

Notable about the recently-filed lawsuits is that it is the first time for Samsung to ask the court to put a sales ban on the Mac laptop and Apple TV for infringing its patent rights as well as its services.

“We decided to file the lawsuit to respond to the additional patent claims raised by Apple in February,” said a Samsung official.

The move came as a surprise since many assumed the two parties would reach a compromise of some kind with the chief executives of both companies scheduled to meet within 90 days.

On Wednesday, Samsung confirmed that its vice chairman and CEO Choi Gee-sung will take to the table with Apple’s chief Tim Cook to discuss matters on their ongoing patent disputes. The two are engaged in over 30 different lawsuits in nine countries.

“Our stance, however, on going ahead with the patents suits has not altered,” the Samsung official said.

This indicates that Samsung will maintain a hard stance ahead of its negotiations with the U.S. IT giant, which is in line with its mobile chief Shin Jong-kyun’s statements made repeatedly through its patent battle.

Most recently, Shin made clear again during a press conference in Barcelona that the company will push its legal efforts, stating that “there is no room for negotiations.”

Although Samsung has yet to win a legal case in the nine different countries, it is continuing to file infringement suits involving wireless technologies, user interface and design against Apple since a lawsuit was first raised by Apple in April last year.

Since then, patent infringement suits were filed by both companies at courts in Germany, Australia, the U.K., the U.S., Japan, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Korea.

By Cho Ji-hyun (sharon@heraldm.com)