The European Union is pushing for an anti-trust probe against Samsung Electronics Co. for allegedly abusing  licensing of patents to other mobile-phone manufacturers.

“This is linked to injunctions which have been filed by Samsung against a number of competitors, concerning standards essential patents,” a spokesman for EU antitrust chief Joaquin Almunia said. “We’re looking at the injunctions made on a broad basis… And whether these injunctions themselves are in breach of competition law.”

The commission “has opened a formal investigation to assess whether Samsung Electronics has abusively, and in contravention of a commitment it gave to the European Telecommunications Standards Institute, used certain of its standard essential patent rights to distort competition in European mobile device markets,” the Brussels-based authority agency said.

Samsung also failed to overturn the ruling of a higher regional court in Duesseldorf, Germany over the sales ban on older versions of the  Galaxy 10.1 tablet.

Oracle setback in HP Itanium case

In other court news, Oracle’s claim that they were duped by Hewlett-Packard into hiring HP’s former chief executive officer Mark Hurd was dismissed.

Oracle claimed that HP deliberately hid their plans of hiring Leo Apotheker as CEO, Ray Lane as board chairman, and that they were paying Intel $88 million a year to “artificially continue” the Itanium chip’s lifespan.

A San Jose, CA judge stated that HP’s alleged misrepresentations “did not prevent Oracle from participating in the negotiations” over the Hurd settlement “or deprive Oracle of the opportunity to negotiate.”

However, the claims of both parties to seal documents, even though it could contain sensitive information about their business or customers, were declined.