One of the latest signs that there’s an escalating “patent arms race” between Apple and Samsung is that Samsung in record filing more than 10 times as many European patents as rival Apple in 2013. They were the number one patent filer in Europe with 2,800 patent applications. Google wasn’t far behind with 2,200 applications whereas Apple dropped down to being number 50 on the top 100 patent filers in 2013.

According to the Financial Times, the big increase in the number of Samsung’s patent applications came in the same year that it lost a high-profile court case in the US where the judge initially awarded $1.05bn in damages to Apple. In Europe, applications typically take three to five years to be approved.

A partner specializing in intellectual property at a London-based law firm noted that “Samsung is obviously trying hard to bolster their portfolio to put themselves in a better position with regards to licensing discussions.”

This is just unfortunate, a bad trend.