Samsung, Apple Inc.(AAPL) high-profile trial kicks off

Trial on the patents' battle between Apple Inc.(NASDAQ:AAPL) and Samsung kicked off on Tuesday with the Korean handset maker saying it has not copied the iPhone but had merely followed America's competitive policies.

Apple has sued Samsung for copying the designs of its iPhones and iPads for its Galaxy range of smartphones, which have become the best-selling phones globally.

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Harold McElhinny, the lawyer representing Apple, told the court that internal analyses showed that Samsung had deliberately copied its designs, to which Samsung's attorney Charles Verhoeven replied that it was competition.

With more than half of the world's smartphone being sold by these two companies, there is a lot at stake for them. Samsung faces a potential ban in the U.S. of its Galaxy smartphones while for Apple it is a test of its global patent strategy against Google's Android operating system.

Both companies face the prospect of shelling out millions in damages to each other if the verdict goes against them.

Lawyers representing Apple showed slides of Samsung phones dating from 2006 through 2010 to show the transformation in the design of its phones over the year and how the later phones closely resembled its own.

Samsung however argued that many of the features in iPhone were already developed by others and could be claimed to be unique to it.

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"Samsung is not some copyist, some Johnny-come-lately doing knockoffs," Verhoeven told the jurors.

The trial is expected to continue for three weeks before the jury will start to deliberate on arriving at a decision.