In weekend I told you that Samsung introduced to a court in Germany a request by which he wanted to prohibit the sale of iDevices because they would have violated certain invention patents held by the Korean company. The process introduced by Samsung was based on technologies similar to those used by Motorola to win a preliminary hearing against Apple, but in the case of disputes between Samsung and Apple, things are a little more complicated. Although Samsung is asking in some countries to ban the sale of the iPhone 4S terminal, today a company official announced that South Korea will no longer ask for this.
Samsung Electronics has decided not to seek an injunction against the sale of Apple's iPhone 4S in the domestic market. The new iPhone went on sale here last Friday. Samsung had debated until the last moment whether to file the motion after making similar applications in France, Italy, Australia, and Japan.
The decision was apparently driven by public-relations concerns. A senior Samsung executive said, "We concluded that we should engage in legal battles with Apple only in the global market, but not in order to gain more market share in Korea."
It is interesting that in South Korea Samsung does not want to fight with Apple, but in the rest of the world the battle continues. This decision could be based, I say, on one of the following reasons: Samsung doesn't really put that much price on the South Korean market; Samsung doesn't think it can win a ban in South Korea; iPhone 4S is very popular in South Korea or iPhone 4S doesn't sell well enough to be worth the effort. Whatever the reason, for now Samsung will not try to block the sales of this terminal in its native country.
