Samsung Electronics has hit back at its arch rival LG Electronics after the latter company last week filed a complaint against it with South Korea’s Fair Trade Commission. 

LG said in its complaint late last week that Samsung’s QLED TV marketing campaign was “misleading” consumers. 

QLED is the marketing term Samsung uses for its premium LCD TVs that use quantum-dot technology to enhance the picture. But LG said in its complaint that Samsung’s TVs aren’t real QLED display since they are still basically just LCD TV panels with an additional QD sheet. Samsung’s QLED TVs don’t use quantum-dot emitting diodes thus they cannot really be considered “QLED TVs”, LG said. 

The complaint also points out that the term QLED is very similar sounding to the word “OLED”, which is a more superior display technology exclusively manufactured by LG. 

LG goes on to ask the South Korean Fair Trade Commission to impose the “necessary measures” to protect consumer rights. 

LG has been sticking it to Samsung in more ways than one recent weeks. Only this month, for example, it hit out at its rival by claiming its 8K TVs don’t provide true 8K resolution as they fall short when it comes to the crucial matter of “contrast modulation”, which measures how distinguishable each pixel is from the others. LG reckons that its higher contrast modulation rating of 90% makes its latest TVs the first “real 8K televisions”, noting that Samsung’s own models score a very low 12%. 

LG's argument seems to have some merit as the Consumer Technology Association last week said a contrast modulation rating of 50% or higher is one of the minimum specifications TV manufacturers must meet in order to carry its new "8K Ultra HD" logo.

But now it seems that Samsung has had enough of LG’s nitpicking, saying in a statement to South Korean news website The Elec Monday that “such exhaustive disputes” are causing “confusion among consumers and market players” during what is a “challenging business environment.” 

"We will sternly deal with groundless claims by LG,” Samsung said, without elaborating how it would do so.