Samsung seeks sale ban on iPhone 4S
Tech giant to file complaints with courts in Paris, Milan
By Kim Yoo-chul
Samsung Electronics said Wednesday that it is seeking a sales ban on Apple’s just-unveiled iPhone 4S due to alleged infringements of its patents.
In a statement, the company giant said it will file complaints with courts in Paris and Milan, where Samsung Electronics is seeing a steady market share increase.
``The iPhone 4S slavishly infringed on four Samsung-developed patents including transmission technology. Apple’s infringement is severe, thus it should not be allowed to sell the iPhone 4S,’’ Samsung said.
Spokesman Shin Young-june said Samsung won’t let other manufacturers take a ``free ride’’ on key patents and added its legal team is mulling the possibility to expand the number of countries it will file complaints in.
In Paris, Samsung plans to sue Apple on one patent that covers the encoding of a signal transmission format and one that corrects encoding errors.
In Milan, the South Korean company insisted that Apple infringed on a patent that covers a method for bundling low bursts of a data into efficient transmission.
``Our next targets, however, haven’t been decided on yet,’’ said Shin.
Steve Park, a local Apple representative, declined to give any comments despite the decision raising possibilities that Samsung will also take Apple to court in Korea.
Meanwhile, analysts are asking: ``What does Apple not unveiling the iPhone 5 mean?’’ although it is true the American giant is following its unique policy of keeping consumers in the dark.
The buzz about the iPhone 5 became stronger after former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, an Apple board member, made a reference in South Africa to ``the new iPhones coming out next month.’’
Experts and sources say that the release of the iPhone 4S rather than iPhone 5 gives Samsung opportunity and risk.
``Apple is struggling to deliver break-through innovations. Instead, Apple now adopts some of the best ideas of third-party app developers, who are usually unaware of the need to file for patents early on, and incorporates acquired technologies such as Siri into its platform,’’ said Florian Muller, a German analyst whose popular Foss Patents blog covers technology-related patent disputes.
``For Samsung, there are risks and opportunities associated with this. The opportunity is to take away more market share from Apple. The risk is that Apple may increasingly feel forced to rely on patent litigation for competitive purposes. If Samsung can fend off those attacks, its multi-platform strategy offers potentially huge rewards in the future since Apple will continue to cede market share to others,’’ Muller said in an email interview with The Korea Times
Former Apple chief executive Steve Jobs made contact with Samsung in July 2010 with the aim of apparently settling the patent dispute, said Richard Lutton, a senior director at Apple and Apple’s patent attorney in a court in Sydney.
But the approaches didn’t produce any visible results. Also, Apple was recently under fire for leaking confidential information by insisting that Samsung was asking it to pay higher royalties in return for using telecom-related patents.
``These things didn’t happen, coincidentally. Apple is realigning its patent-related strategies. We understand that Apple believes that our repeated hard-line stance is not a bluff,’’ a Samsung source said.
``Apple feels that it’s been being squeezed and that it is humiliating to grapple with another lawsuit but this time with its latest and strategically-important iPhone 5,’’ he said.
The iPhone 4S uses Samsung Electronics’ A5 mobile application processor, LG Display’s ``Retina Display’’ LCD screen and LG Innotek’s camera modules.
The iPhone 4S is the first new model since Apple released the iPhone 4 in April last year. The 4S offers an extended battery life and improved data processing speed.