Apple is suing Samsung Electronics, claiming the South Korean firm's Galaxy line of mobile phones and tablets "slavishly" copies the iPhone and iPad, according to court papers.

Analysts say the move is aimed at keeping its close rivals at bay.

Apple is one participant in a web of litigation among phone makers and software firms over who owns the patents used in smartphones, as rivals aggressively rush into the smartphone and tablet market which the US firm jumpstarted with iPhone and iPad.

Nokia has also sued Apple, which in turn has sued Taiwanese handset maker HTC.

Samsung is one of the fastest growing smartphone makers and has emerged as Apple's strongest competitor in the booming tablet market with models in three sizes but it remains a distant second in the space.

Its Galaxy products use Google's Android operating system, which directly competes with Apple's mobile software. However, Apple's claims against Samsung focus on Galaxy's design features, such as the look of its screen icons, the lawsuit said.

John Jackson, an analyst with CCS Insight, said Samsung is essentially Apple's only real tablet competitor at this stage. "It's clear that they do not intend to let Apple run away with the category," Mr Jackson said.

Samsung faces the challenge of moving beyond being a hardware company, clever at copying ideas, to becoming more creative, better adept at software, at a time when consumer gadgets are getting smarter all the time.

It has yet to come up with the kind of original, iconic, market-leading products that powered brands such as Apple's i-series or Sony's Walkman. Nor has it taken the kind of initiatives in software that Google and Apple did to thwart Microsoft.

The lawsuit, filed on Friday, alleges Samsung violated Apple's patents and trademarks.

"This kind of blatant copying is wrong," Apple spokeswoman Kristin Huguet said in a statement.

Samsung said it would respond to the legal action "through appropriate legal measures to protect our intellectual property". "Samsung's development of core technologies and strengthening our intellectual property portfolio are keys to our continued success," it said in a statement.

Apple chief executive Steve Jobs has criticised Samsung and other rivals in presentations of new products or technology debates. Analysts say Samsung's response to this has been muted, partly because Apple was Samsung's second-biggest customer last year after Sony.

Apple brought in around 6.2 trillion won ($5.7 billion) of sales to Samsung in 2010 mainly by purchasing semiconductors, according to Samsung's annual report.

"This is more like a symbolic move by Apple that it is quite serious about rivals advancing and it is trying to hold back its close competitors," said John Park, an analyst at Daishin Securities in Seoul. "Samsung is unlikely to respond aggressively given that Apple is its core client in the component business."

To better compete with Apple, Samsung redesigned within weeks its new 10.1-inch tablet, first introduced in February, to make it the thinnest in the category after Apple set the trend with its iPad 2.

The global smartphone market is expected to grow 58 per cent this year and Android is set account for 39 per cent of the market, while the tablet market is likely to quadruple to 70 million units, according to research firm Gartner.

Apple's iPad will still dominate, controlling more than half of the tablet market for the next three years, but its share is seen gradually declining to 47 per cent in 2015 from 69 per cent this year, giving way to Android devices.

US International Trade Commission staff, at a hearing yesterday, recommended that HTC and Nokia shouldn't be found liable for infringing Apple's patents relating to smartphones, Bloomberg reported.

ITC staff act on behalf of the public and its recommendations are not binding.

In its lawsuit against Samsung, Apple said earlier versions of Samsung's smartphones did not embody the same combination of Apple's designs.

"Even the icons in earlier versions of the Samsung smart phones looked different because they had a variety of shapes - and did not appear as a field of square icons with rounded corners," the lawsuit said.

Apple is bringing 16 claims against Samsung, including unjust enrichment, trademark infringement and 10 patent claims.

Reuters