The Wall Street Journal is reporting this morning that Apple (AAPL) has scored another victory against Samsung and hired veteran chip designer Jim Mergard away from the South Korean company.

The 16 year veteran worked for Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) serving a leading role as Chief Engineer at AMD in the development of Brazos before moving on to Samsung. The move comes at an interesting time as Apple and Samsung are involved in a fierce rivalry in both the showroom and the courtroom.

Both Apple and Samsung have recently been beefing up their chip development talent (both currently using ARM mobile processors), and this could come as a blow to the South Korean conglomerate in the race to continually develop and produce smaller, faster, and more energy efficient chips.