By Hyunjoo Jin and Dan Levine SEOUL/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and Apple Inc said on Wednesday they had agreed to drop all patent litigation outside the United States, scaling down a protracted legal battle between the smartphone rivals. The South Korean and U.S. tech giants declined to disclose the terms of the deal but said it did not involve "any licensing arrangements and the companies are continuing to pursue the existing cases in U.S. courts." The agreement ends patent disputes in Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, South Korea, Spain and the United Kingdom, countries where the smartphone market leaders had engaged armies of lawyers for what analysts said were questionable gains. Apple and Samsung together dominate the global smartphone market with a combined market share of 37.1 percent in the second quarter of 2014, according to Strategy Analytics. Their legal battle began in the United States in 2011 when Apple first filed a suit alleging Samsung "slavishly" copied elements of its iPhones, the device which launched the industry.



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