Samsung has fallen foul of a US court, over its handling of confidential information concerning agreements between parties including Apple and Nokia.

The issue centres on information provided as part of a lawsuit which should have only been made available to a limited number of people, as permitted by a court protective order. Sensitive information provided by Apple included a 2011 licence agreement with Nokia, and details of similar deals with Ericsson, Sharp and Philips.

According to documents released this week by the US court for the Northern District of California, Samsung made available a report which “addressed highly confidential, attorneys’ eyes only information”, via an FTP site, with access instructions provided to “over fifty Samsung employees, including high-ranking licensing executives” and lawyers involved in other cases.

While acknowledging that “at this point things get murky”, the court said that in a meeting earlier this year Samsung licensing executive Seungho Ahn informed Nokia that he was aware of the terms of its Apple deal, and attempted to use this to “gain an unfair advantage in negotiations with Nokia, by asserting that the Apple-Nokia terms should dictate terms of a Samsung-Nokia licence”.

Noting that this meeting may have “occurred very differently”, it continued that “unfortunately the court cannot say, because Samsung has elected not to provide the court with any sworn testimony from Dr Ahn or anyone else at the meeting”.

Magistrate judge Paul Grewal wrote: “Samsung is unable to provide evidence on even the most basic questions, such as: who has now had access to the confidential licensing information? For what purpose? When? Where? How?”

While the report said that the court cannot say if the actions of Samsung and its legal team are likely to lead to sanctions, it did argue that “letting Samsung and its counsel investigate this situation without any court supervision is unlikely to produce satisfactory results”.

Grewal has called for Ahn and several other Samsung employees to be made available, as well as for the company to disclose a raft of additional information.  It said that “the parties shall appear for a further hearing on this motion on 22 October 2013”.