Last updated: March 6th, 2026 at 15:22 UTC+01:00
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Samsung once said: It's fake. Choose real!
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Abhijeet Mishra / SamMobile
While Samsung continues to evolve its TV portfolio, it is also waging a legal battle against some competitors. The company has accused rivals like TCL of mislabeling their products and overstating their capabilities. And this week, Samsung won its first big battle.
Samsung claims TCL misused the QLED tag to falsely promote several TV models. The company argues that those TVs are, in fact, not true QLEDs. And fortunately for Samsung, the Munich Regional Court agreed with Samsung's definition and has taken action against TCL in Germany.
In partnership with multinational law firm Pinsent Masons, Samsung recently won a key legal dispute. The company demonstrated that TCL's so-called QLED TVs lack the necessary technologies to be classified as QLED.
TCL failed to refute these claims, and after review, the Munich Regional Court sided with Samsung, ruling that TCL engaged in misleading advertising.
The court barred TCL from calling these TVs QLED and ordered corrections to its false statements. Six TCL models are affected, and among them are: QLED870, CM8B, C805, C655, and C69B.
This is just one case of “fake QLED.” Similar disputes are ongoing in Korea and the USA. But according to Pinsent Masons, this marks Samsung's first international win on the matter.
Given all this, Samsung's unusual “It's fake. Choose real!” marketing campaign last year, which poked fun at rivals for being copycats, now makes perfect sense.
Mihai is a blogger and column writer at SamMobile. His first Samsung phone was an A800 which took a lot of beating, and a part of him still misses the novelty of the clamshell design. In his free time, he enjoys watching shows, documentaries, and stand-up comedy; listening to music, taking walks, and occasionally playing old(er) video games.
