What Fresh Joy Is This? Samsung Apple Spat Heats Up Ahead of Super Bowl

The folks at Samsung, busy promoting the Galaxy S II (its latest commercial is above), must be feeling pretty good in general these days. Samsung filed trademarks for ‘Samsung Joy’ and ‘Samsung Fresh’ smartphones on Jan. 13, cheerful names meant to elicit delight and spark interest.

“Both trademarks were registered with the United States Patent and Trademark Office and labeled as ‘telephones; smart phones; mobile phones; computer software for mobile phones, portable media players and handheld computers,” according to BGR.com. More will be explained at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February. GizmoCrave is hearing that Samsung will bring two new devices to the Congress, possibly entry-level handsets.

One thing Samsung likely isn’t feeling joyous about is its loss in a patent suit in German Friday against Apple.

“Samsung, which passed Apple in the third quarter as the world's top maker of smartphones, is locked in a bruising patent tussle with the U.S. firm in some 10 countries from the United States to Australia, France and Japan,” Reuters reports. The suit only dealt with one of the 13 patents the two are battling over, as Apple also challenges Samsung's Galaxy Nexus over the slide-to-lock function.

In fact, Samsung's new commercial is the latest in a series of spots bashing Apple and its devotees, laying the foundation for its Super Bowl commercial, as AllThingsD's Ina Fried points out.