SINGAPORE -- The long-drawn-out legal battle between Samsung Electronics and Apple may be a headache for the world’s top two smartphone makers, but is also proof for the pivotal role of intellectual assets in the global economy, according to the World Intellectual Property Organization.

“We are living in an era when conventional physical assets are increasingly converted into intangible intellectual assets and the intellectual property agenda is rising as a key basis of business competition,” said WIPO Director General Francis Gurry.

“The smartphone patent dispute between Apple and Samsung is a good example that exhibits such growing importance of intellectual assets in our modern commercial world.”

WIPO, one of the 17 specialized agencies of the United Nations, held a regional seminar for journalists in Singapore from Monday to Tuesday this week, seeking to promote the organization’s activities and inspire media workers across the Asia-Pacific zone to appreciate the value of intellectual assets.

Asian states, regardless of their respective level of economic development, are currently the most dynamic in terms of intellectual property environment evolution, according to the speakers and organizers.

“Due to the recent changes in the international landscape, the intellectual property agenda is no longer driven by the West,” said Irene Calboli, professor of law at Singapore Management University and deputy director at the Applied Research Centre for Intellectual Assets and the Law in Asia.

While China remains the unrivaled champion in the Asian region in terms of market size and its growing number of patent applications, South Korea also rose to the global spotlight with the Samsung-Apple dispute – referred to by some as the “patent war of the century.”

“(The Samsung-Apple brawl) was neither about individual patents, nor just about the brand value,” Calboli said.

“It was an extensive fight between the global top competitors to keep each other off the market, and intellectual property was the tool.”

The prolonged legal skirmishes between the two smartphone makers seemed to turn out in favor of Apple as the US Supreme Court in November upheld a $120 million patent award which the Korean conglomerate was previously ordered to pay its US rival.

The legal battle, however, is to drag into the eighth year as the two companies are once again headed back to court early in 2018 over a $339 million suit for Samsung’s alleged infringement on Apple’s smartphone design patent.

According to WIPO’s annual report published in October, up to 35 percent of all patents filed worldwide since 1990 are related to smartphones. The actual number may be much higher as smartphones involve a variety of technological components, many of them not unique to smartphone sectors, the report added.

Given the extensive scale and technical complexity of the information and communications technology market, intellectual property may continue to have a double impact on the smartphone market in the upcoming years, according to WIPO.

“On one hand, intellectual property expedites innovation by enabling effective knowledge transfer and learning among numerous patent holders, companies and universities,” the report said.

The increasingly strategic use of intellectual property, however, may also boost costly and lengthy legal disputes, such as in the Samsung-Apple case which is marked by its sum of damages and the intricate multi-jurisdiction litigation around the world.

“(The Samsung-Apple case) was a natural consequence of a competitive market with high stakes, as well as a reflection of the substantial use of intellectual property in this industry,” according to the WIPO director.

By Bae Hyun-jung
Korea Herald correspondent
(tellme@heraldcorp.com)