This is the South Korean company's first victory over Apple, which has not yet issued any statement. Court rules US company must also pay legal fees. Samsung shares gain 1.6 per cent following sentence.

Tokyo (AsiaNews) - Samsung scored its first win when a district court in Tokyo ruled that the South Korean company did not infringe on Apple patents. This comes a week after a US court decided in the US Company's favour over the synchronization technology used in Galaxy S, Galaxy Tab and Galaxy S II. Judge Tamotsu Shoji ordered Apple to pay the legal fees.

Samsung welcomed the decision. Apple spokeswoman Carolyn Wu declined to comment the ruling.

In motivating his decision, the judge said the two systems use different codes to synchronise multimedia content. Samsung's Kies method distinguishes a file by its name and size, contrary to Apple's claim it uses other information such as the length of content to recognize which files need synchronising,

In Japan, Galaxy products are made by NTT DoCoMo Inc, the country's largest telephone company.

The sentence pushed up Samsung shares by 1.6 per cent. They had lost 7 per cent in the wake of last week's US ruling when a court in California backed Apple, imposing a fine in excess of a billion dollars.

 

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