I think it's safe to say almost everyone has heard about the court battles between Apple and Samsung by now, which have been going on for years. Apple continues to fight Samsung's success on the market with patent suits claiming it copied various proprietary aspects of the iPhone and these features are helping Samsung's sales.
The American electronics giant was just dealt a blow in one of these court cases, with the judge ruling that Apple did not provide enough evidence to demonstrate that Samsung's copying of features directly helped its strong hardware sales.
In this particular case, Apple was attempting to ban several older Samsung smartphone models from sale entirely within the United States. Though these phone models are obsolete and irrelevant now by the time the case was heard, Apple maintained it was important for precedent moving forward so that Samsung did not copy future features in similar smartphones.
Samsung was pleased with the decision saying, "We...agree with its observation that a few software features alone don't drive consumer demand for Samsung products--rather, consumers value a multitude of features."
Samsung also allege that Apple is attempting to instill fear and confusion in the market and into service providers with these continuous court cases to disrupt its sales.
The South Korean corporation has been ordered to pay more than $900 million dollars to Apple in a patent infringement case from 2012, which stayed in the public eye while it was ongoing. Samsung is appealing that case. I'm sure this is not the last we'll see of Apple and Samsung in court over these types of battles, as the smartphone market becomes even fiercer as time goes on, with Windows phones fighting for market share as well.
Source: Reuters