Samsung Electronics Co. lost its first round of a patent battle with its smaller Chinese rival Huawei Technologies Co. and was ordered by a Chinese court to pay 80 million yuan ($11.6 million) for infringing on the company’s smartphone technologies.

The Quanzhou Intermediate People`s Court ruled three Chinese subsidiaries under South Korea’s Samsung Electronics had violated Huawei’s patented smartphone technologies. The court ordered Samsung to pay 80 million yuan in damages, according to local media reports.

Huawei is the world’s third-largest smartphone maker after Samsung Electronics and Apple Inc. It filed its first patent suit against Samsung in China and the United States in May last year. It argued that Samsung’s 20 smartphone and tablet models including Galaxy S7 used its 11 patented technologies without permission. It claimed that Samsung earned $12.7 billion from selling 30 million or more of the units and demanded its Korean rival to pay for the damages.

Samsung countersued Huawei for six alleged infringed patents related to wireless communications, image data storage, and digital cameras two months afterward.

The result - the Chinese firm’s first legal victory over bigger foreign rivals - is hardly surprising given China’s antagonism towards Korean brands following Seoul’s decision to deploy U.S. missile-defense system Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD).

The Korean firm said it would review the court’s decision as well as the result of its countersuit against Huawei for response action.

Shares of Samsung Electronics ended Friday at 2,080,000 won ($1,136.60), down 12,000 won or 0.57 percent from the previous session in Seoul trading.

By Park Man-won

[ⓒ Pulse by Maeil Business Newspaper & mk.co.kr, All rights reserved]