South Korean media on Wednesday hailed Samsung Electronic Co.’s legal victory against its rival Apple as a potential “turning point” in the two tech giants’ patent war.

The U.S. International Trade Commission ruled Tuesday that Apple infringed on a patent owned by Samsung, a decision that could lead to a ban on imports and sales in the United States for AT&T models of the iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPad 3G and iPad 2 3G.

Korean media suggested the victory might tilt the scale toward Samsung in future cases against Apple.

The Asia Economy Daily and other papers wrote that Apple was “humiliated” on its “home field,” indicating that the U.S. agency’s ruling against Apple may prove to be critical.

Local broadcaster YTN said that while it would be premature to predict Samsung’s victory just yet, the ITC ruling might corner Apple.

“The ITC ruling could allow Samsung to take the high ground in future patent cases against Apple,” it reported.

Business paper Money Today wrote that the ramifications of Tuesday’s ruling would be huge given that the ITC had overturned its earlier ruling which exonerated Apple’s infringement charges.

Foreign media remained cautious not to overplay the significance of the ITC’s ruling.

The AFP and BBC reported that Samsung’s victory “could be largely symbolic” since the banned devices are no longer actively sold in the U.S.

The Bloomberg Business Week also predicted that the impact of the possible ban would be financially limited because it only applied to older devices. It added that the ruling was a “big blow symbolically” to Apple, which suffered a string of bad publicity including controversy over tax avoidance and allegations of conspiracy to fix prices of electronic books.

Some experts said Samsung may take the patent case to another level.

Silicon Valley analyst Rob Enderle told the AFP that the South Korean firm may expand similar lawsuits against Apple’s new products, which he explained was “typical.” He said such an action might be enough of a risk to prompt Apple to become “more open” to negotiations with Samsung.

Even if Samsung decides to pursue legal action against Apple’s newest products, it is unclear if it would be successful.

South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency, citing local experts, said a legal principle called “patent exhaustion” had been applied to the ruling in a way that excluded Apple’s latest devices from the possible import ban. Under the principle, companies cannot collect licensing fees multiple times.

Apple argued that the licensing fee for the technology in Samsung’s patent claim had already been paid for by Qualcomm Inc., Apple’s current wireless chips supplier. Given the ruling, Korean media speculated that the patent exhaustion principle was not accepted for Apple’s older models that used Intel chips.

At issue is that Samsung had a patent deal with Infineon Technologies, whose wireless solution division was sold to Intel in 2009. And Samsung and Intel did not have a formal agreement on the patent in question.

If the patent exhaustion principle was indeed applied to Apple products, Samsung is less likely to win future patent case against Apple’s Qualcomm-supplied devices. The ITC has yet to unveil specific grounds for its ruling.

The ITC ruling could be overturned if U.S. President Barack Obama decides to strike it down. While the presidential veto is extremely rare, Obama is against import bans based on patent disputes similar to the Samsung-Apple case. The White House on Tuesday recommended to the U.S. Congress that it limit the ITC’s ability to impose import bans on such cases.

Apple said it would file an appeal with the U.S. Federal Circuit.



By Yoon Min-sik
(minsikyoon@heraldcorp.com)