Samsung and Apple devices both banned in Korea

While the jurors in the US patent case between Samsung and Apple take time to deliberate, a similar case in South Korea has ended with the judge banning devices from both companies.

According to the BBC, the court ruled that Samsung had copied Apple’s “bounce back” feature, which lets a user know when they’ve scrolled to the end of a page, while Apple had copied some of Samsung’s data transfer methods, which make transmission more efficient.

Crucially, the judge ruled that Samsung was not guilty of copying designs, which is a large part of Apple’s complaint.

“Given that it’s very limited to make big design changes in touch-screen based mobile products in general… and the defendant [Samsung] differentiated its products with three buttons in the front and adopted different designs in camera and [on the] side, the two products have a different look,” said the official ruling.

As a result of the ruling in Korea, the Apple iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPad and iPad 2 are banned. Samsung has seen its Galaxy S, Galaxy SII, Galaxy Tab and Galaxy Tab 10.1 products banned. This still leaves both companies able to sell their latest mobiles and tablets in Korea, though.

Small damages were also awarded, with Apple told to pay £22,000 and Samsung told to pay £14,000 – small change to either company.

It’s now interesting to find out how the US court case pans out and it the jury reaches similar conclusions. If it too rules that Samsung didn’t copy Apple’s designs, then you’d hope that both companies can come to an agreement over their other patents and get on with making better products rather than dealing with court cases.