Making a mark on one of the major ‘smartphone wars’, Samsung won a patent infringement case against Apple. A Dutch court has held Apple guilty for infringing on a patent owned by Samsung.

With the iPhone 4S, Apple has infringed on a Samsung patent that governs an “apparatus for encoding a transport format combination indicator for a communication system,” according to The Hague, which also awarded damages.

It is unclear how much Apple owes Samsung in damages.

Samsung obviously reacted with pleasure and welcomed the court’s decision. They said that Samsung had spent years developing those patents, which now stand as their technological innovations and abilities.

In Apple’s defense, of the four patents which Samsung claimed to have been infringed by Apple only one was found to be infringed upon by Apple.

It should be mentioned this is not the first time Samsung has filed patent infringement suits against Apple. But in the past Samsung has found minimal, if any, success. And this being their first legal victory over Apple, they now surely have a reason for celebration, which is visible from their public statement.

Florian Mueller, a patent blogger made an interesting observation:

“Samsung has approximately 100,000 patents worldwide. At some point it had to win something,” Mueller quipped, though given the dozens of complaints currently being hashed out around the globe, “the impact of today’s ruling is minimal,” he said. “It’s not even clear that Samsung will make enough money as a result of this infringement finding to offset the 800,000 euros it now owes Apple in legal fees because it lost with respect to three of its four patents.”

Maybe just a boost for their ego, then.

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[via PCMag | Image Credit: TalkAndroid]