Samsung, LG locked in OLED battle

A legal battle between Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics is getting fiercer.

The conflict focuses on the intellectual property of a variety of products and technologies ranging from refrigerators to the futuristic organic light emitting diode (OLED) televisions.

Leading the LG charge is Koo Bon-joon, LG Electronics CEO and brother of LG Group Chairman Koo Bon-moo.

Left behind by Samsung, LG wants to show it still is ahead in growth engines such as OLED televisions, and is also seeking hefty compensation.

Samsung isn’t sitting idle, with officials calling LG’s move as one made out of desperation.

“LG really wants to give the impression that its technologies are better than those of Samsung’s. The latter has no intention of allowing this and wants the former to remain stuck second-place,” an industry source said.

“It’s an ego issue,’’ admitted a senior LG Electronics official.

“It was not long ago when LG had been confident that it was making better feature phones than Samsung. In the age of smartphones, LG is no longer in competition with Samsung. LG needs a breakthrough.’’

LG has filed a lawsuit against Samsung for allegedly infringing on its patented technology for OLED televisions, which enable significantly sharper pictures while consuming less power than conventional liquid crystal display (LCD) models.

The company is also seeking a sales ban on Samsung’s Galaxy S3 smartphone and Galaxy Tab 7.7 tablet computer, which it claims uses the disputed OLED technology in its displays.

LG recently filed another lawsuit against Samsung over an advertisement on YouTube. The Samsung commercial suggested that LG was overstating the capacity of its refrigerators, according to legal papers from LG, which is seeking 10 billion won in damages.

“By continuing a legal battle, Samsung wants to maintain its claim that its home appliances are better in terms of hardware than LG’s. But as white goods were s one area in which LG had been claiming supremacy over Samsung, the advertisement appears to have hurt its pride,’’ said an official from Seoul Central District Court, who didn’t want to be named.

Representatives from both Samsung and LG agree that a truce won’t be reached quickly.

“This has become basically a fight about who has the better technology. The feeling here is that we can’t afford to compromise and I assume Samsung people will be thinking the same,’’ said another LG official.

Park Chang-min, an official from one of Samsung’s part suppliers, wondered whether LG has less to lose from going all-out in the fight because the former has to be more concerned about how it finishes its feud with Apple.

Samsung and Apple, which have a duopoly in mobile Internet devices, have been fighting feverishly since last year when Apple accused its Korean rival of copying the look and feel of iPhones and iPads.

“Let’s see how far this comparatively new rivalry between LG and Samsung will go,’’ he said.

A previous fight between Samsung and LG involved three-dimensional (3D) televisions proved much ado about nothing because the demand for stereoscopic televisions was underwhelming.

It remains to be seen whether OLED televisions will sizzle or fizzle, with Samsung and LG scrambling to beat each other out of the gate. <The Korea Times/Kim Yoo-chul>