Samsung Electronics, sanctioned by a U.S. judge for its failure to produce source code in a patent-infringement case in San Jose, California, won’t be able to use some evidence to defend itself against Apple Inc., a judge ruled.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Paul S. Grewal wrote in his May 4 ruling that Samsung “plainly violated” a court order requiring it to turn over code to Apple, and ruled that Samsung won’t be able to offer evidence in the case about its efforts to “design around” three patents at issue in the case.

In its lawsuit, Apple claims that Samsung’s 4G smartphone and Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet computer infringe its patents. In December, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose ruled against Apple’s request to block Suwon, South Korea-based Samsung from selling that phone and tablet in the U.S. That order followed an Australian court ruling lifting an injunction on the tablet there.

Samsung, which was the world’s largest seller of smartphones last year, and Cupertino, California-based Apple have filed at least 30 lawsuits against each other on four continents since April 2011.

In his ruling, Grewal said producing source code in patent litigation is “disruptive, expensive, and fraught with monumental opportunities to screw up.” Still, under federal law there is no exception to the requirement, especially when a defendant in a patent suit challenges the opposition’s failure to analyze the accused product’s source code, the judge said.   [Korea Herald]

It seems to me that by Samsung not providing the source code for the legal authorities to compare to Apple’s source code is a sign that maybe they really did infringe on Apple’s patent.

The U.S. outdoor brand that has dominated the South Korean market for years is at risk of losing its position after it was hit with a record fine.

The nation’s antitrust watchdog hit The North Face Korea last week with a 5.2 billion won ($4.6 million) fine for compelling all 151 of its retailers here to charge 10 to 15 percent higher prices than for rival brands since 1997 to maintain the brand’s premium image.

The Fair Trade Commission said that the unfair practices of the brand with over 30 percent market share also affected rival companies such as Kolon Sports, K2 and Columbia. Korean consumers also had to pay 50 percent more for the brand’s down jacket due to the price-fixing, according to Seoul Young Men’s Christian Association.   [The North Face]

You can read the rest of the article at the link which includes information about how The North Face jackets have become a major status symbol in Korean schools and even a source of bullying.

It seems to me if a company wants to set their own price for a product they should be allowed to do so.  If people do not want to pay it they can go elsewhere.  Obviously The North Face is offering a product that Korean consumers are willing to pay a premium price for.  It seems to me this has more to do with helping Korean outdoor businesses be more competitive against The North Face than actually caring what prices consumers are paying for these outdoor jackets.

So when is the FTC going to go after Samsung for example that sells electronics at prices higher in Korea compared to the United States?

Coffee franchises are raising prices, making consumers anxious that it might cause a domino effect ahead of the summer, the high season for beverage sales.

Starbucks Coffee Korea, the nation’s leading coffee franchise, announced on Thursday that it will charge 300 won more on 32 of its drinks starting Monday. Caffe Bene, which has the greatest number of stores here, also raised prices last month of the drinks sold at its main Gangnam store in southern Seoul.

“The milk price, labor costs and rent all sharply rose last year. We have been tolerating the factors until now, but could no longer avoid the price adjustment,” said Starbucks through a statement.

The coffee house also took off 100 won to 200 won from prices of 13 drinks and maintained those of 10. But consumers find it rather mean as the price increase mainly occurred on the best selling products including the top five ― americano, cafe latte, caramel macchiato, cafe mocha and green tea frappuccino. The ones marked down include less popular items like lavender earl grey or white mocha frappuccino.

Caffe Bene increased around 100 won to 500 won of the drink prices main Gangnam store. The price of the americano, for example, rose from 4,000 won to 4,500 won and cafe latte from 5,000 won to 5,300 won.   [Korea Herald]

The only coffee I like to drink in Korea is Dunkin Donuts; I wonder if their prices are going up as well?

Ruling party chief Park Geun-hye said Friday South Korea should halt quarantine inspections of American beef until it is confirmed safe to consume, as criticism grew over the government’s decision to continue imports despite a new mad cow case in the U.S.

Quarantine inspections are a key requirement U.S. beef shipments must undergo to receive customs clearance. Halting the process would therefore have the same effect as suspending imports because shipments would not be cleared to reach the local market even if they arrive at the country’s ports.

The remarks by Park, a leading presidential hopeful, increased pressure on the government, which has come under criticism for deciding to continue imports of U.S. beef with strengthened quarantine inspections despite the recent confirmation of a case of mad cow disease in the U.S.

Government officials have said the current situation does not merit an all-out halt of quarantine inspections as the latest case involving a dairy cow is not directly connected to beef that comes under South Korea’s import regulations. Public and political criticism has not died down, however.

“I think the government should halt quarantine inspections until we get definite information convincing enough to the people through epidemiological investigation, and should suspend imports altogether if a final analysis shows there is even a slight problem with safety,” Park said during a visit to the southeastern city of Masan.

Park said the government should not give the public the wrong perception that it is more interested in avoiding trade friction with the United States than in the health and safety of its people.  [Yonhap]

Over at the Marmot’s Hole he has a posting up that shows how the Hankyoreh is trying to push old mad cow fears such as how Korean are genetically more acceptable to getting mad cow disease in order to further frighten the public, which is of course not true.  I wish the Hankyoreh showed this much concern when the North Koreans were busy killing South Koreans two years ago while US beef has killed exactly zero people in South Korea.  Expect to hear a lot about public safety in regards to US beef in Korea when in reality it is all about anti-US politics.

 South Korea will beef up quarantine checks on U.S. beef imports and take other emergency measures following the latest discovery of a mad cow case in America, the farm ministry said Wednesday.

The Ministry for Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries said it is checking details of the latest mad cow case and plans to take appropriate measures in accordance with the country’s prevention of livestock epidemics act and import health requirements pact reached with Washington that permitted the import of U.S. beef.

“At present, Seoul has not taken steps to halt customs clearance of imported U.S. beef,” a spokesperson for the ministry said. Stopping customs clearance of beef can effectively halt all imports.

The latest mad cow case reported in California is the fourth to be detected in the U.S. Seoul had banned U.S. beef imports in late 2003 after the first case was reported, but fully reopened the market in 2008 after long-drawn negotiations with Washington.

The ministry said that the latest case involving a dairy cow is not directly connected to beef that can be imported by the country.

Under the bilateral pact with the United States, South Korea only imports beef from animals under 30 months old with all specified risk materials (SRMs) removed. SRMs are parts of a cow that could transmit the fatal disease to humans. Humans who eat the infected SRMs can come down with the variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, which has killed around 150 reported people so far.

U.S. health authorities, meanwhile, stressed that the case found was a very rare “atypical” case of mad cow disease that did not involve the animal eating animal protein-based feed that has been cited for causing the sickness.

The U.S. has halted protein-based feed from reaching animals to contain the outbreak of the disease.  [Yonhap]

Within days of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s assurance to South Korea that all was well with the $12-billion Posco project, the situation has taken a new turn. In a major setback to the South Korean steel giant, the National Green Tribunal today suspended the environment clearance granted to Posco’s proposed mega project in Orissa a year ago.

The directive has put at risk the single largest FDI (foreign direct investment) in the country so far, in addition to hampering the already poor investment climate. The Vodafone tax case, the subsequent Budget announcement on retrospective taxation and the cancellation of telecom licences, including those of Russia’s Sistema and Norway’s Telenor, have all added up to give India the image of a poor investment destination.  [Business Standard]

You can read the details at the link but POSCO initially received their environmental clearance to construct the facility way back in 2007 and has had their clearance revoked and reissued to them multiple times.  With incidents like this it is easy to understand why major manufacturing corporations would be hesitant to do business in India.

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The Fair Trade Commission on Thursday fined four major local noodle makers a combined 135.4 billion won (US$119.6 million) for fixing prices of the popular processed food for many years.

The commission said the fine has been levied on Nongshim Co., Samyang Corp., Ottogi Ltd. and Korea Yakult for illegally setting prices on their products on six different occasions from 2001 through 2010.
Of the four companies cited for breaking the law, Nongshim, which allegedly played a key role, was fined 107.7 billion won, followed by Samyang with 11.6 billion won. Ottogi and Korea Yakult were slapped with fines of around 9.7 billion won and 6.3 billion won, respectively.  [Yonhap]

This just makes you wonder how many other companies are colluding to set prices on consumers in Korea as well?

It seems the patent battles between Samsung Electronics and Apple will not be decided by law but by the world markets after courts in several countries refused to give either side much of an advantage.

The Mannheim regional court in Germany last Friday dismissed a claim by Apple that the Samsung Galaxy Tab tablet PC infringed on its patent. It was the first decision in Germany in a total of six patent lawsuits Apple had filed against Samsung there since last year.

Currently, the two companies are engaged in about 30 patent lawsuits in nine countries including Germany, Australia, the U.S., Japan, and Korea.

In the Mannheim court, Apple claimed that Samsung violated its patent on a “slide-to-unlock” feature on smartphones. The same court last month ruled in favor of Apple in a similar patent suit against Motorola but it said Samsung’s technology is sufficiently different.

But the court the same day also ruled in favor of Apple in a different patent suit brought by Samsung. Samsung had claimed that Apple infringed patented technology reducing errors that occur in the process of transmitting data online.

A Samsung executive said, “We’re going to appeal to a higher court to prove Apple’s infringement of our patented technology.” The Mannheim court also rejected two suits Samsung filed against Apple over communication technology patents last year.   [Chosun Ilbo]

According to The Next Web, Apple is beating Samsung tablet sales in South Korea. The interesting part is that South Korea is Samsung’s home turf. The iPad holds an estimated 70 to 80% of the South Korean tablet market. Those percentages include both the original iPad and the new iPad 2.

In 2011 through the end of the year, Apple moved 700,000 iPad devices in South Korea. Sales in the first two months of 2012 contributed several hundred thousand additional units sold for Apple allowing it to surpass the 1 million tablets sold mark. The most interesting part of the story, is that the 1 million sold number could be much smaller than the actual number of iPads in the country.

Before the iPad officially went on sell in South Korea, the number of Apple fans would undoubtedly have ordered the tablet through other means. The most popular version of the iPad in South Korea is the Wi-Fi only version.  [i4U News]

The Korean property market seems to be grinding to a halt. The total number of apartments that were bought and sold last month stood at the lowest rate since 2006, when such data was first tabulated.

According to the Ministry of Land, Transportation and Maritime Affairs on Thursday, a total of 15,181 apartments were traded in January, down 76 percent from the previous month and just a third of the volume seen one year earlier. It was also less than half of the average volume (33,000) traded over the last three years.

In Seoul, volume dropped 72 percent on-year in January, or 64 percent in areas outside the capital.

Some 23,828 apartments were bought and sold in 2006, a number that increased steadily until 2008 but dropped to around 18,000 in 2009, in the wake of the global financial crisis triggered by the collapse of Lehman Brothers in the U.S. But trading volume rebounded over the next two years.

However, things took a sudden turn for the worse at the end of last year as certain tax benefits for people buying houses came to an end, leading to a drop in demand.   [Chosun Ilbo]