Samsung Electronics, the world’s largest smartphone maker, on Thursday defended itself in a German court against U.S.-based Apple but was not as successful on its home turf.

The Mannheim district court of Germany on Wednesday (local time) invalidated a lawsuit filed by Apple against Samsung for infringement on a patent involving language-specific keypads.

The language-specific technology originally belonged to Mitsubishi before Apple acquired it in 2011.

It basically stores a multilingual character set with language-specific sections so that even unique letters that don’t exist in the alphabet can be typed in for more accurate text messaging.

Apple had claimed that all of Samsung’s Android-based devices infringe on this patent.

Back home in Korea, a local court dismissed a second lawsuit Samsung had filed against Apple Korea. The Seoul Central District Court dismissed Samsung’s claims of patent infringement by Apple Korea and request for compensation for related damages.

The court said the short message display and messaging grouping features on Apple products such as the iPhone 4S, the iPhone5 and the iPad 2 did not violate Samsung’s patents.

Samsung Electronics said following the announcement of the ruling that it “regrets the decision,” and would take legal steps to continue securing its patent rights.

Over the past two years, Apple and Samsung have gone to trial twice in a San Jose, California, federal court, where juries awarded Apple roughly $930 million in damages.

By Kim Ji-hyun
(jemmie@heraldcorp.com)