The patent war between Samsung and Apple escalated on Wednesday with France and Italy becoming additional battlefronts as the Korean technology giant petitioned French and Italian courts to stop the sale of the newly-released iPhone 4S in the two European countries.

Samsung is hoping to turn the table against its nemesis, which has successfully convinced local courts to stop the sale of its smartphones and tablets in Australia, European countries, and Japan.

Samsung may yet score its first legal victory against Apple if French and Italian courts will agree that the iPhone 4S illegally uses of the Korean firm's wireless telecommunications technology called Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA).
Samsung posted on its corporate blog "Samsung Tomorrow" that "the infringed technology is essential to the reliable functioning of telecom networks and devices."

"Apple has continued to flagrantly violate our intellectual property rights and free ride on our technology. We believe it is now necessary to take legal action to protect our innovation," the bog said, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Samsung also plans to file preliminary injunction motions with courts in other countries to ban the sales of the iPhone 4S on the same ground of patent infringement.

So far, the Samsung-Apple patent war is tilted to the U.S. firm's favor. Apple has just obtained a court order temporarily stopping the sales of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Australia.

There are also temporary sales bans on the Samsung's Galaxy S, Galaxy S II and Ace smartphones in 30 European countries, and on the Galaxy Tab 10.1 and 7.7 in Germany.

Both technology giants are actually business partners. Samsung manufactures Apple's A4 and A5 processors that power the iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPad 2 and iPod Touch. But the relationship turned sour as the two produce competing products.