Apple vs Samsung: European Union Now Investigates Samsung for Potential Anti-Competitive Practices

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Samsung’s gigantic legal battle against Apple that spreads over four continents has just took a turn for the worst for the South Korean Android device maker as Sammy is about to be investigated by the European Union for anti-competitive practices.

The news comes not from the EU’s Directorate-General for Competition, which has not disclosed the investigation yet, but from a court document Apple filed recently in California stating the following:

Samsung’s efforts to coerce Apple into tolerating Samsung’s imitation have not been limited to the counterclaims here [in California]. Samsung has launched an aggressive, worldwide campaign to enjoin Apple from allegedly practicing Samsung’s patents. Samsung has sued Apple for infringement and injunctions in no fewer than eight countries outside the United States. Indeed, Samsung’s litigation campaign and other conduct related to its Declared-Essential Patents is so egregious that the European Commission recently has opened an investigation to determine whether Samsung’s behavior violates EU competition laws. Apple brings these Counterclaims In Reply to halt Samsung’s abuse and protect consumers, the wireless telecommunications industry, and Apple from further injury.

The EU has so far investigated Microsoft and Intel, and it’s also looking at Google’s business practices, but why did it decide to check out Samsung? Is the EU in love with Apple products? That surely isn’t the case.

It appears that the EU is concerned with the way Samsung is going after Apple accusing the later of various 3G-related patent infringements. These 3G patents are referred to as FRAND (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory) patents, or standard patents which can’t really be used by any company to gain significant advantages off of them. FOSS Patents explains the difference between Apple’s intellectual property and Samsung’s and the use thereof in their current quarrel:

There are really two kinds of intellectual property rights. It’s quite easy for a participant in a standard-setting process to obtain monopoly power. If you have the leading players in the industry at a table defining an industry standard that everyone implements, everyone who holds patents deemed essential to that standard would be able, theoretically speaking, to shut down everyone else with those patents. That’s why a FRAND licensing commitment is an indispensable prerequisite for participating in a standard-setting process. By contrast, it’s much harder to develop powerful patents outside of a standard-setting process. Apple has single-handedly revolutionized an entire industry (if not multiple industries), and that’s why it owns valuable patents that are not subject to FRAND licensing commitments.

A Dutch judge recently sided with Apple in a patent case initiated by Samsung that was based on 3G patents and refused to award a preliminary injunction against Apple products in the region. We’re talking here about the same FRAND patents that Samsung is asserting against Apple in other EU countries and the EU will apparently investigate Samsung’s apparent misuse of these patents.

The fact that the EU has entered the Apple vs Samsung conflict shows that things are getting more and more serious between the two companies, and it can also be a devastating blow to Samsung’s lawsuits that are based on such standard patents. In fact the EU may be exactly the bulletproof vest Apple needed to avoid any potential injunction against its products in any of the EU countries. On the other hand, it’s not like Samsung has been close to banning sales of any Apple device in any of the countries the two companies are suing each other in, so Apple didn’t really seem like it was losing the any of these battles.