An almost forgotten court case in the Netherlands finally got a verdict after Apple appealed against a fast procedure last October. What was at stake was Samsung´s counterclaim that Apple violated the 3G/UMTS patents.
In October the judge tried to get both parties back to the negotiating table as it seemed quite clear that Apple was infringing on Samsung´s standard essential patents and the question was how much Apple would have to pay for them.
In the final judgement which came in today the court has ruled that it was not that straightforward as three other patents have been excluded from Samsungs victory.
To clarify, the patents here are subject to FRAND (Fair, Reasonable and Non Discriminatory) terms as they are part of an official standard. In other words Samsung can´t deny Apple a license but Apple has to pay for them and the amount should be comparable to what all other phone manufacturers pay Samsung.
Apple however always denied liability claiming that the chip provider was responsible. An argument which is correct for the new 4S and the iPad2 as QualComm is their new supplier and it does cover these licenses for Apple. The judge didn´t agree with Apple for the older iPhone 3G, 3GS, 4 and the iPad 1 en 2 where the chip was made by Intel.
Apple will have to pay Samsung an undisclosed amount for damages since august 2010 and 800.000E legal costs.
In case you wonder which patent was violated according to the court: it was EP 1188269 which covers TFCI (Transport Format Combination Indicator) a complex description of a simple indicator of the speed with which the phone tries to communicate with the antenna. A typical standard patent as there a zillion ways to achieve this, but only the one accepted in the industry will work.
One other patent was denied by the court, a huge blow to Samsung, while two others were not violated. by Apple according to the verdict.
As this case has been the first occasion worldwide where a full court judged on more than temporary measures this will no doubt be uses in court houses all over the world to sue Apple. However the victory is too small to end the patent war as Apple can easily afford to pay for past damages now that their current products have been cleared from infringements. #patents #PatentsMax
Samsung lost first court case in Netherlands to stop Apple from selling phones I can imagine that not everyone is up to speed with all the court cases…
Oh the #irony! Thanks for the post +Max Huijgen
Thanks for that Max 😛
There's no irony, all the big corporations try to take advantage of the patent system to clear out any potential competition.
Impossible apple invented everything, even invention itself.
+John Maguire, you can see here how the patent war isn't only an Apple thing. All big corporations actually do the same. This time, Microsoft Vs. Motorola/Google:
uk.ign.com/articles/2012/06/21/will-xbox-360-be-banned-in-the-united-states
source G+ post:
plus.google.com/100801061924982065053/posts/YN6nguBBYUh