The South Korean government on Monday expressed concerns about the decision by the United States to overrule a sales ban of some Apple Inc models.
Reuter is reporting that the South Korean government has expressed concern about the latest development in the Apple vs Samsung saga.
On Saturday, the Obama administration vetoed a USITC ban on the import and sale of some older iPhones and iPads won by South Korea’s Samsung Electronics over Apple. This move was vehemently criticized by the South Korean media as protectionism, according to the report.
“We express concerns about the negative impact that such a decision would have on the protection of patent rights,” the Ministry of Trade, Industry & Energy, said in a statement.
According to the report, “the ministry called on the U.S. trade body and the Obama administration to make “fair and reasonable decisions” as Samsung faces a decision on Friday as to whether some of its phones and tablets infringed on Apple’s patents and should be banned from imports into the United States.”
However, the decision by the US government was applauded by one patent expert.
“This is the first veto of an ITC ruling in decades, and I believe the ITC’s majority opinion was so out of step with basic antitrust rules and its effects would have been so very anticompetitive and anti-innovative that this veto was unfortunately necessary,” Florian Mueller reports for Foss Patent. “The issue here is not primarily what would have happened to those older iPhones and iPads — I’m sure Apple could have handled the situation somehow. The problem is that this would have made the ITC the forum of choice for SEP abusers.”
The USITC decision on whether Samsung infringes Apple’s patent (non- SEPs) is expected this Friday.
