By Kim Yoo-chul
Samsung Electronics said Saturday it will appeal against the latest ruling in the United States that truly favored Apple and stressed Apple's win is a ``loss'' for American consumers.
A U.S. jury has just awarded a clear victory to the Cupertino-based Apple, which is also the national pride for Americans, saying that its biggest business partner and competitor Samsung Electronics infringed on its patents for mobile devices.
The jury in the state of California awarded Apple more than a billion dollars in damages, Samsung confirmed the outcome of the ruling.
``This is not the final ruling. But the latest decision is a loss for consumers in the United States and will lead to fewer choices," Samsung said in a statement.
``We will appeal against the U.S. ruling to protect our intellectual properties. Apple wasn't the first to design features over rectangles with rounded corners. Therefore, it's very unfortunate that patent law could be manipulated to give a certain company a monopoly over the design feature or technology that's being updated everyday by Samsung and other companies,'' the statement added.
Although the verdict favored Apple, its spokesman Steve Park wasn’t available for comment despite multiple phone calls.
Samsung had previously argued that by 2006, several months before the California-based Apple released its first 3GS-based iPhone in early 2007, the Korean company was developing a next-generation of smartphones with a rounded rectangular body on surface that both companies are currently using.
The jurors’ decision is expected to affect other pending cases in the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, Japan and others. Samsung and Apple are fighting in 40 different cases in 10 different countries.
The U.S. case is part of a multibillion dollar global legal battle between the two technology heavyweights. A day ago, a court in South Korea, Samsung’s home ground, ruled that Samsung didn’t copy the design of iPhone and asked Apple to stop selling some of its i-branded products.
The Korean court asked Samsung to pay Apple with $22,000 for damages caused by using one Apple design patent.