They only thing surprising here is that a preliminary injunction was actually granted, in Europe no less.
I have been involved in a patent case myself and how that went is,
A competitor launched complaints against the company I worked for and filed it in Wisconsin to get it processed quickly with a relatively high chance of success. This lead to a long process of discovery, investigating the claims, disputing them, proving prior art etc. We probably could have won the case on that alone but it would take a long time and representing a foreign company in a US court against a US company is always a gamble. Especially with how many ways patent claims can be interpreted. Most of the time I spend with our lawyers was discussing the exact meaning of each word in the patent claims, and finding examples to back up the meaning favouring our position instead of a more general meaning that probably everyone infringes on.
The way to get these cases to solve quickly is to file a counter claim, just what LG did now. Since the company I worked for was still young it did not have a big patent portfolio yet. Solution, buy a couple of patents that the competitor infringes on and bring that against them. Result the case was solved quickly with a mutual agreement to leave each other alone.
Funny thing is just last year they were both in court again, this time as co-defenders against a third company filing a patent case against them. The case was dismissed again.
