The launch of the iPhone 4S in France and Italy might encounter a slight detour as Samsung Electronics Co. sought to stop the sale of the phone. The company aims to use the situation as leverage on a broader worldwide patent fight with Apple.

Samsung, one of the world's largest smartphone and tablet manufacturers, is in a long legal battle with Apple Inc. over patents. Apple has blocked the Samsung Galaxy Tab from being sold at Germany and the Netherlands. The company has claimed that Samsung has violated their patents with the iPhone and iPad with the Samsung Galaxy Phone and Tablet being too similar to their products the iPhone and iPad.

Samsung has filed cases against Apple in the two countries over their patents on 3G transmission technologies. The patents are contributed by the company to an international body that standardizes 3G technology for use even by their competitors like Apple, HTC and LG on a reasonable and fair basis.

In France, Samsung aims to sue Apple over their patent on encoding of a signal transmission format and a method for correcting encoding errors. In Italy Samsung will enforce their patent over a signal transmission format and another one for a method for bundling low bursts of data into a more efficient transmission.

Last week, Samsung has pressed a federal court judge to let them launch their Galaxy Tab in the Australian market. Samsung has tried to reach a settlement between it and Apple in a last ditch effort to launch the tablet. Now launching the tablet looks bleak after the settlement was rejected by Apple.

Samsung's strategy may change the technology industry standards involving patents as they press the courts to make a decision if standard patents can be used to force a competitor to give up rights from proprietary patents that hasn't contributed to technological standards pool.

Apple has unveiled the iPhone 4S in their event last Oct. 5 in their Cupertino Campus. The phone was largely deemed a disappointment by the public as it only has upgrades in their hardware and with no other features added to the phone.

The phone would be available in the US, Canada, Australia, UK, France, Germany and Japan with 22 more countries by Oct. 28 and will be released to 70 more countries at the end of 2011.

The price for the device would be $199 US for a 16GB version, $299 US for the 32GB and $399 US for the 64Gb version.

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