Samsung lost its copyright case against Apple, but in the vast global flux where innovators swim alongside imitators, where copycats tease the elusive boundary of originality, South Korean brands - Korean minds and Korea's relentlessness - don't seem remotely like losers.
Take a look, for instance, at the endearingly demented music video of the month, that infectiously viral Gangnam Style.
In just over a month, 75 million have viewed it on YouTube. It's currently No.1 on the iTunes' music videos chart. The upbeat dance song by plump Boston-grad Korean rapper Psy comes with a signature move dubbed "horse dance", a mix of fake galloping, jittery skipping and invisible lassos - relying less on physical fluency than on mental courage.
Psy looks cuddly, like a happy bear out of a long hibernation. Funny, racy-cute and super-silly, the song and video have inspired thumbs-ups, face-palms, giggles, guffaws, contempt, international spoofs and extended the discussion about the instant evolution/reproduction/imitation of global pop-culture.
Apple accuses Samsung of lifting. Now the debate has heated up as experts point out Psy's Gangnam Style, besides being an obvious case of musical hogwash, is basically a mash-up of Sexy & I Know It and Party Rock Anthem, both of them smash hits by the American electronic duo LMFAO.
Watch the videos of these two songs, and you can see the same ribald humour and colourful irreverence as in Psy's hit (but then, doesn't LMFAO's attitude descend from something else too?).
Add up the fact that five days ago, a Thai pop band led by a guy called Cutto made a parody of Gangnam Style, supplying it with Thai lyrics, called it Kamnan Style ("kamnan" as in tambon chief) and racked up 1.5 million YouTube views, and we're on the shaky ground of post-everything simulacra as the concept of originality sounds like hogwash itself.
The Koreans have built their powerhouse by taking from the West and searching for a way to originalise it.
They're building chips for Apple, and they want to take a bite off Apple. Likewise their soft products, from music to movies and TV shows, build upon the structure of Western pop-cultural content, digesting, localising, intensifying and re-formatting it for export and GDP growth.
Gangnam Style is just another manifestation of what Korea is doing with culture the same way LG and Samsung have been doing for decades with electronic goods. They're the original imitators. And I mean it as a compliment.
Where does Thailand fit into this game? Next Saturday, adolescents will scream their throats dry in one of the biggest concerts of the year featuring TVXQ!, SHINee, BEAST, BTOB, and B.A.P.
The show is called "Korean Big Five in Bangkok". The top-tier ticket is 6,000 baht. The five bands are doll-faced "idols" commanding seismic followings not only in Thailand but across Southeast Asia.
Their influence is beyond music. Their very physical appearance is a propaganda of the modern concept of beauty itself.
One way for fans to profess their dedication to one of these bands is to stage cover dances, forming a group and copying the moves in their music videos.
Or if you have the means and the madness, do what Cutto (pronounced "cut-toh", like a Japanese name) has done in Kamnan Style. The Thai spoof video is almost a shot-by-shot parody of Psy's, which is already a parody in itself. Cutto really invested time and money in caricaturing the caricature, or as he told me over the phone, he wanted to "out-mad Psy" because it would give everyone involved "satisfaction".
The video is a decent production and even includes a scene in a real aeroplane cabin in which Cutto and his crew do the flamboyant Psy dance (Nok Air let them use one of their planes).
Cutto's is not the only Thai parody of Psy's Gangnam Style, and while he's giving 1.5 million people some satisfaction and entertainment, this mirror hall of parody - this hierarchy of endless imitation - opens up larger economic and cultural implications: Korea - Samsung or Psy - strives to transcend the state of apeing into the act of creating, and then into that supreme status where they can influence.
Proof? Just make a trip to the Korean Big Five gig, or count how many Samsung monitors there are in Thai houses. Meanwhile, imitators who only imitate (and laugh satisfactorily) will regress, economically and culturally. If they can't progress to the state of creator, they will forever be stuck as consumers. Which is exactly what we are.
Samsung may lose, but in truth Korea wins. Now do the horse dance!
Kong Rithdee is Deputy Life Editor, Bangkok Post.