Company says it will make utmost efforts until U.S. judge’s final ruling


Samsung Electronics said Monday that it will give its utmost effort to alter the jury verdict announced by a San Jose court over its patent battle with Apple last week.

“There is no case in which a firm achieved continuous growth by only winning a court suit and not competing on fair grounds,” its officials posted on its internal blog.

“The U.S. judge still needs to release a final ruling on the case and we still have many steps to take after that as well. … The courts in the U.K., Netherlands, Germany and Korea have come to a decision that we did not copy Apple’s designs over the same allegations and they also recognized some of our standardized intellectual property.”

A jury panel at the San Jose court announced its verdict early Saturday, Korean time, which ordered Samsung to pay over $1 billion to Apple for infringing on the U.S.-based firm’s patents, accepting most claims that the Korean tech behemoth copied Apple’s designs of wireless gadgets.

“We were significantly disappointed by the jury verdict,” Samsung officials said. “We apologize to our employees as well as our consumers for causing such concern.”

The company also explained why it had to take part in a multi-billion-dollar patent fight with Apple.

“We took steps to solve the problem with Apple through dialogue considering that the firm is our major customer, but we were forced to file countersuits to defend ourselves following Apple’s legal suit,” said Samsung officials.

The company strongly expressed its belief that the market and the consumers would support Samsung for its innovation rather than the firm it said was focusing on beating competition through legal suits.

Samsung share prices in Korea, however, tumbled following news that Apple won a sweeping victory in the U.S., which is the home of the largest North American market, with the price slipping since opening the stock market on Monday.

The stock prices of Samsung’s parts suppliers, such as Samsung Electro-Mechanics and Partron, also fell.

But analysts here said the jury verdict will not have a continuous negative impact on Samsung’s shares since the firm’s latest flagship smartphone Galaxy S3 and the new Galaxy Note 2 were exempt from Apple’s list.

“Because Galaxy S3 was excluded from the list, it will not deal a fatal blow to the mobile phone sales for Samsung. The jury’s fixed amount of damages could be lowered throughout the future court sessions although I don’t expect a lot,” said KDB Daewoo Securities analyst Song Jong-ho.

“The Galaxy Note 2 will also launch in Germany on Aug. 29, which is also a product with high expectations.”

Daishin Securities analyst Kang Jung-won also said he believes the impact of last week’s jury verdict to have a limited impact on the court sessions ongoing in other regions.

“There is no reason to give a broad interpretation of Samsung’s loss in the jury verdict of the San Jose court to other areas,” he said.

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