South Korean tech giant Samsung is to drop a legal request to ban Apple
products in five European countries but will maintain lawsuits for
alleged patent infringement, a Samsung spokeswoman told AFP on Tuesday.
The five countries concerned are Britain, France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands, she added.
A
Samsung statement said the South Korean group "strongly believes it is
better when companies compete fairly in the marketplace, rather than in
court."
"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," it added.
Apple and Samsung have filed lawsuits
against each other in around a dozen countries for alleged patent
violations related to competing products, in particular the iPhone and
Galaxy S smartphones, as well as tablet computers.
A US judge
Monday denied Apple's request to ban a set of Samsung smartphones from
the US market after a jury found the South Korean electronics titan
guilty of patent infringement.
Samsung the world's top mobile and
smartphone maker was ordered by a US jury in August to pay Apple $1.05
billion (800 million euros) in damages for illegally copying iPhone and
iPad features for its flagship Galaxy S phones.
Samsung has appealed the ruling.
Since then, two separate rulings by courts in Japan and the Netherlands have dismissed Apple's claims of patent infringement.