The court session held in Seoul on Friday was only one battle in a multibillion dollar patent war between Samsung Electronics and Apple Inc. that has been ongoing for more than a year.

The court battle began last year when Apple filed a suit against its parts supplier Samsung at a U.S. court in San Jose for patent infringement on April 15.

While many believed Samsung would back off due to the fact that Apple was its biggest customer, the company took a surprising step and filed countersuits against Apple over patent rights in courts located in Korea, Japan and Germany about a week after on April 21.

The move indicated that the intellectual property fight between the two tech giants had started as the court battle was starting to take place in multiple countries.

Apple then also filed a patent infringement claim at the Mannheim court in Germany, where Samsung had already filed, on June 16 and also submitted a preliminary injunction against its Korean rival at a Tokyo court a day after on June 17.

The Cupertino-based firm also submitted a patent infringement case against its rival at a Seoul court on June 23.

The two soon widened their boundary to the International Trade Commission, both requesting that the U.S. organization ban the importing of each other’s electronics goods.

While the two firms continued with their overseas patent infringement claim filings, a German court in Dusseldorf on Aug. 9 of last year ordered a sales ban on Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 for it ruled that Samsung’s gadget had copied its rival’s flagship tablet PC iPad.

But the court reversed the injunction soon on Aug. 16 and restricted the application to Samsung’s German headquarters, which enabled the firm to sell the device in most European nations, excluding Germany and the Netherlands.

The situation then looked worse for Samsung as an Australian court’s slapped a temporary ban on its Galaxy Tab 10.1 on Oct. 13, 2011, and another court in the Netherlands rejected Samsung’s preliminary injunction on patent infringement against Apple the following day on Oct. 14.

However, it began to look positive for the Suwon-based electronics maker when a U.S. District Court in San Jose rejected Apple’s bid to block sales of Samsung’s three Galaxy smartphones and the Galaxy Tab 10.1.

The Australian High Court also turned down Apple’s request to extend the sales ban on Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 on Dec. 9.

With the continual exchange of suit filing in nine different nations, the chief executives of the two companies ― Choi Gee-sung, who now heads Samsung Group’s corporate strategy office, and Apple’s Tim Cook ― met for the first time in the U.S. on May 21-22 in an effort to resolve the patent dispute.

Without an agreement, they advanced with their international patent battle and are now waiting for a U.S. jury ruling set to be given early on Saturday, Korean time.

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