Samsung To Face EU's Antitrust Charges
The European Commission will soon charge Samsung Electronics in an antitrust patent case, the European Union's competition chief Joaquin Almunia said on Thursday.
The EU competition watchdog is investigating whether Samsung broke EU competition rules by filing patent lawsuits against Apple.
EU regulators are expcted to accuse Samsung of breaking competition rules in filing patent lawsuits against Apple.
"We will issue a statement of objections very soon," Almunia said, referring to the Commission's charge sheet.
Prior to Almunia's statement, Samsung on Tuesday said it was dropping an attempt to stop the sale of some Apple products in Britain, France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands.
Apple in August won a major victory in the smartphone patent war when a jury in a California federal court ordered Samsung to pay $1.05 billion in damages.
On the other hand, Samsung succeded in convincing the U.S. patent office to rejected Apple's "pinch-to-zoom" touch screen patent case in an initial ruling on Thursday. The Korean company also won a preliminary invalidation of Apple's "rubber-banding" patent in October.
Seperately, the European Commission has been inerstigating Google and Microsoft.
The EU antitrust authority on Tuesday gave Google a month to come up with detailed proposals to resolve an investigation into complaints that it used its power to block rivals.
In Microsoft's case, the EU said Thursday it is close to a decision in its investigation of US giant Microsoft and its failure to provide clients with a choice of Web browser, as it had promised to do.
EU regulators are expcted to accuse Samsung of breaking competition rules in filing patent lawsuits against Apple.
"We will issue a statement of objections very soon," Almunia said, referring to the Commission's charge sheet.
Prior to Almunia's statement, Samsung on Tuesday said it was dropping an attempt to stop the sale of some Apple products in Britain, France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands.
Apple in August won a major victory in the smartphone patent war when a jury in a California federal court ordered Samsung to pay $1.05 billion in damages.
On the other hand, Samsung succeded in convincing the U.S. patent office to rejected Apple's "pinch-to-zoom" touch screen patent case in an initial ruling on Thursday. The Korean company also won a preliminary invalidation of Apple's "rubber-banding" patent in October.
Seperately, the European Commission has been inerstigating Google and Microsoft.
The EU antitrust authority on Tuesday gave Google a month to come up with detailed proposals to resolve an investigation into complaints that it used its power to block rivals.
In Microsoft's case, the EU said Thursday it is close to a decision in its investigation of US giant Microsoft and its failure to provide clients with a choice of Web browser, as it had promised to do.
