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 and Apple in domestic courts of multiple States since 2011 concerning patent infringements involving their new digital products. The intensity of these confrontations between the two digital giants has come to exert significant influence over the lives of many people all over the world. In a sense, they are not competing to protect or increase the market share in a given domestic market, as other large corporations usually do; rather, they are now competing in a single, integrated global digital market where borders and boundaries have virtually disappeared. The emergence of the dominant digital entities is a showcase example of the increasing role of the MNCs in the international community, an issue that has already attracted a significant amount of attention from scholars of international law. At the same time, the unprecedented clash between the two corporations in multiple jurisdictions also raises an important issue of how conventional jurisdictional principles under international law are and will be implicated in this regard.