There’s been an interesting development in the long running legal battle between Apple and Samsung. Today Samsung announced that it is dropping its request for European injunctions against Apple products. The South Korean company originally claimed that Apple infringed on several patents, which were required to comply with European mobile telephony standards. However Samsung appears to have changed its mind:

“Samsung remains committed to licensing our technologies on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms, and we strongly believe it is better when companies compete fairly in the marketplace, rather than in court. In this spirit, Samsung has decided to withdraw our injunction requests against Apple on the basis of our standard essential patents pending in European courts, in the interest of protecting consumer choice.”

The statement applies to the legal battles being waged in France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands and the UK, but doesn’t affect the continuing litigation in the U.S. Whilst it sounds very kind of Samsung to drop their injection case, it’s not entirely clear whether or not this is just a face-saving statement.

Whilst this certainly doesn’t mean the end to the patent war, there should at least be less back and fourth between the two companies in the immediate future.