Samsung Drops Requests To Ban Apple Products

Samsung has withdrawn lawsuits which seek to ban the sale of Apple products in Europe, although the companies' legal battle over copyright continues.

A statement by the Seoul-based company said it strongly believed companies should compete in the marketplace, not in court.

"Samsung remains committed to licencing our technologies on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms," it said.?

"In this spirit, Samsung has decided to withdraw our injunction requests against Apple on the basis of our standard essential patents pending in European courts, in the interest of protecting consumer choice."

The announcement came shortly after a US judge rejected Apple's call to ban the sale of several Samsung smartphone models in America.

Apple applied for the ban after a jury found in its favour in August, saying the South Korean firm had illegally used Apple technology.

District Judge Lucy Koh's decision is part of a series of rulings that she is releasing over several weeks to address the many legal issues that were raised in the case.

Apple was awarded $1.05bn (?648m) in damages after jurors found Samsung had copied critical features of the iPhone and iPad.

Samsung was found to have copied features of the iPad and iPhone

It had urged the judge to permanently ban the US sales of eight Samsung smartphone models, while also seeking to add millions more to the award.

"The phones at issue in this case contain a broad range of features, only a small fraction of which are covered by Apple's patents," Judge Koh wrote in her ruling.

"Though Apple does have some interest in retaining certain features as exclusive to Apple, it does not follow that entire products must be forever banned from the market because they incorporate, among their myriad features, a few narrow protected functions."

Earlier this month, she appeared ready to trim the $1.05bn in damages that had been awarded by the jury, but gave no indication as to by how much.

Adding to the legal tangle, Apple filed a second lawsuit earlier this year, alleging that Samsung's newer products are unfairly using Apple's technology.

That trial is scheduled to go ahead in 2014. The two companies are also locked in legal battles in several other countries.

Earlier this year, Apple lawyer Harold McElhinny claimed Samsung "willfully" made a business decision to copy Apple's iPad and iPhone.

He called the jury's $1.05bn award a "slap on the wrist".

Samsung lawyer Charles Verhoeven argued Apple was trying to tie up Samsung in courts around the world rather than competing with it in the marketplace.

Samsung also claimed it had been deprived of a fair trial as the California courthouse is located just 12 miles from Apple's headquarters in Cupertino.

Source: http://news.sky.com/story/1027042

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