The jury in the trial between Apple and Samsung in California may still be working on coming to a verdict, but tonight some decisions were made in legal battles between the two companies in a completely different part of the world. According to the Wall Street Journal, a court in Seoul, South Korea has determined that Apple infringed upon two Samsung patents. A report from Asia Economic claims that the two Samsung patents in question relate to data transmission. As a result of the ruling, Apple will be forced to pay a fine of around $35,000. The court also deemed that Apple's infringing products, the iPhone 4 and iPad 2, will be hit with a sales ban.
The same South Korea court also decided that Samsung infringed upon one Apple patent, which the WSJ says has to do with bounce-back tech, which is implemented when a user scrolls past the end of a photo or document. Samsung faces a fine of $22,000 and will also have sales of its infringing products halted. The affected devices are said to be the Galaxy S II, Galaxy Nexus, Galaxy Tab and Galaxy Tab 10.1. It's not all bad for Samsung, though, as the court ruled that there's "no possibility" that consumers would get Apple and Samsung's phones mixed up and that icons found on Samsung smartphones don't infringe on patents held by Apple.
In all, it looks like Samsung came out slightly ahead in these decisions, getting one more patent victory than Apple as well as a little more cash in damages. Neither ruling seems like it should affect the companies too greatly, though, as the fines are rather small and the products that will be banned aren't exactly new models. Still, it's nice to get some more decisions in a couple of the many (and I mean many) different legal battles between Apple and Samsung. As for what happens next, both companies will have the option of fighting the decisions in appeals court, though it's not yet clear whether or not they'll actually do so. As usual, you can be sure that we'll pass along more details as we get 'em.
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