Japanese Court Clears Apple of Two Samsung Patent Infringement Claims

The fight between Apple and Samsung has reached another milestone: the Tokyo District Court ruled that Apple is not infringing on the two patents asserted by Samsung.

Since the $1 billion judgment Apple is slowly but steadily winning territory, of which Japan is one. As Florian Müller of Foss Patents points out, Samsung won favourable rulings in two countries: Korea and the Netherlands, although the latter wasn’t a major one.

“Samsung’s problem is not that there were two non-wins in Japan,” Mueller says. “Samsung’s problem is that Apple has won a variety of rulings (even if none of them had or has the potential to force Samsung out of a major market) while Samsung hasn’t won anything meaningful outside of Korea, and nothing anywhere in the world over a non-standard-essential patent.”

Two Japanese rulings have been revealed recently by the English edition of The Asahi Shimbrun, a Japanese newspaper, both coming from the Tokyo District Court. The first one was made on September 14, and held that Apple is not infringing on Samsung’s app download patent. The October 11 ruling was based on Samsung’s in-flight (or airplane) mode patent infringement claims, but favoured Apple. The South Korean company has one more patent in play in Japan, related to the utilization of homescreen space, but we don’t have details about this patent yet.

After seeing that it lost the fight in Japan, in a desperate move, Samsung will file a lawsuit against the Cupertino company in Germany over a smiley input patent, which even if the ruling will be favourable, won’t affect Apple’s business.

[Via Foss Patents]