Samsung today lost a bid to have Apple's iPhone 4S banned in France.
The Paris Court of First Instance denied Samsung's request for a preliminary injunction against Apple's newest smartphone, Samsung confirmed.
"The disproportionate character of the ban sought by Samsung against Apple is clear," Judge Marie-Christine Courboulay said in her decision, according to Bloomberg.
Judge Courboulay did not find that Samsung's suit was abusive, so the company can proceed with the overall lawsuit. But the company must pay Apple 100,000 Euros for its legal fees, Bloomberg said.
In a statement, Samsung said it "will review the written grounds of today's judgment, and continue to take all available options to assert our intellectual property rights to stop this free riding on our technology."
"Over many years, Samsung has pioneered the development of technologies and protocols for the efficient and reliable functioning of telecommunications networks and devices," the company continued. "While Samsung has at all times met its obligations to the fair licensing of its telecommunications standards-related patents, Apple has infringed by using without license Samsung's intellectual property in its iPhone4S and other devices."
The ruling comes about two months after Samsung filed separate preliminary injunction motions in Paris and Milan asking the courts to block the sale of the iPhone 4S in France and Italy.
"Apple has continued to flagrantly violate our intellectual property rights and free ride on our technology. We believe it is now necessary to take legal action to protect our innovation," Samsung said in a blog post at the time.
Specifically, Samsung's complaint focused on two patent infringements related to wireless telecommunications technology, or Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA) standards for 3G mobile handsets.
In a blog post, patent blogger Florian Mueller said he attended a court hearing in the France case on Nov. 17 and "it became clear that the legal standard for a preliminary injunction is reasonably high in France," he wrote, "and Apple's lawyers made a number of points that I couldn't verify in their entirety but which appeared strong enough to dissuade the court from ordering a ban."
Last month, an Italian judge denied Samsung's request for a ban on the Apple iPhone 4S in the country. A second hearing on that case is scheduled for Dec. 16, Mueller said.
"If the Italian bid also fails, the time may come for both Apple and Samsung to realize that you can't win a marathon with a sprint," Mueller wrote. "The problem with those 'sprints'—in terms of requests for preliminary injunctions that courts can grant after a fast-track proceeding—is that when they fail, they do nothing to enhance the credibility of the respective plaintiff."
Mueller suggested Apple and Samsung focus on jurisdictions that tend to resolve cases in a reasonably fast manner, like the International Trade Commission in Washington, D.C., and the Mannheim Regional Court, which he referred to as "Europe's rocket docket."
Apple and Samsung have been battling over patents in various courts all over the globe since April. Most recently, a U.S. judge denied Apple's request for a preliminary injunction against four Samsung products that Cupertino claimed infringes upon its patents.
Apple, however, has been successful in getting Samsung products temporarily banned in Germany and, for a time, in Australia.