TCL North America is suing Samsung Electronics America in Los Angeles. The Chinese TV maker says the Korean company is selling ordinary LED TVs under the Mini LED label. This is a false advertising case brought under the Lanham Act, the US law covering misleading product claims, plus California’s unfair competition statutes.
The target is on Samsung’s M Model TVs launched in March at prices below TCL’s cheapest Mini LED sets. TCL says the M Model and Samsung’s entry-level Crystal UHD line are “nearly identical” and that the M Model contains “none of the technological advancements associated with Mini LED technology”.
TCL is saying Samsung “took a cheap, non-Mini LED model from a recycled product line and peddled it to the public as a ‘supreme’ Mini LED model at an attractive price point”. TCL says Samsung’s Mini LED sales quadrupled in under three months once the marketing started. It wants a court order banning Samsung from using the Mini LED label, and damages.
Samsung has said it will “vigorously defend” itself and stands “fully behind the quality and accuracy of our product descriptions”.
What Mini LED is supposed to mean
Mini LED describes the backlight, not the screen. The LEDs behind the panel are shrunk to roughly 50 to 200 micrometres, so a set carries thousands of them instead of a few dozen, grouped into zones that dim independently. That is what puts a bright highlight next to a genuinely black area. No standards body certifies the term and no regulator counts the zones. Each manufacturer decides when its own backlight qualifies.
The same TVs are already in Kenyan shops
Samsung’s Mini LED range is the M80H and M70H, and both launched here on 11 July, from about KES 165,000 for the 75-inch M80H and KES 240,000 for the 85-inch. Samsung’s pitch to Kenyan buyers was that these are its first sets to use a Mini LED backlight without the quantum dot layer Neo QLED carries, which is how the price came down.
TCL competes against them directly. Its C7L and C8L SQD Mini-LED sets went on show in April at about KES 125,000 and KES 245,000.
Nobody in Kenya tests either company’s claims. The Competition Authority of Kenya can act on false or misleading representations about goods under Section 55 of the Competition Act, 2010, and fine up to 10% of annual turnover, but it acts on complaints, and no shopper has dismantled their backlight to file one.
Samsung sued first
In Germany, this March, the Munich Regional Court ordered TCL’s German unit to stop selling its QLED870 series as QLED, after Samsung sued in April 2025. The court found the quantum dot material in those sets did not meaningfully improve colour. TCL is also currently facing class actions in California and New York over the same QLED word.
The latest Counterpoint Research has put Samsung fourth by units in Mini LED volumes in the second quarter of 2025. They’re now behind TCL, Hisense and Xiaomi. Samsung led the category in 2021 and 2022.
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