A Clash between IT Giants and the Changing Face of International Law: The Samsung vs. Apple Litigation and Its Jurisdictional Implications

There has been a sudden surge in simultaneous legal disputes between Samsung andApple in domestic courts of multiple States since 2011 concerning patentinfringements involving their new digital products. The intensity of theseconfrontations between the two digital giants has come to exert significant influenceover the lives of many people all over the world. In a sense, they are not competing toprotect or increase the market share in a given domestic market, as other largecorporations usually do; rather, they are now competing in a single, integrated globaldigital market where borders and boundaries have virtually disappeared. Theemergence of the dominant digital entities is a showcase example of the increasingrole of the MNCs in the international community, an issue that has already attracteda significant amount of attention from scholars of international law. At the sametime, the unprecedented clash between the two corporations in multiple jurisdictionsalso raises an important issue of how conventional jurisdictional principles underinternational law are and will be implicated in this regard.