Today, I read an article on FossPatents blog about the company InterDigital's latest ITC case against Samsung, Nokia, Huawei, and ZTE. On March 1, 2013, the Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) Robert K. Rogers publically released the start date for a trial-- December 16, 2013. InterDigital is aiming to have an import ban placed on these companies that are allegedly infringing on their patents. If an import ban is indeed granted for InterDigital and if its competitiors have to cease their operations that infringed on InterDigital's patents, it will still take a very long time to happen and it becomes clear how drawn out this process is.
So, even if the import ban is granted, it will require 4 months to rule the case and then another 60 days of Presidential Review and then finally the ruling can go into effect in August 2014, which is a very long time from now. Clearly, these cases take a long time to resolve, and the author of the blog recommended that in the meantime, they should sue for pecuniary compensation in federal court.
Lastly, another remark worth pointing out is that Nokia and Huawei claim that they are being sued over royalities and licensing fees in some countries across the world in whichc InterDigital doesn't even own the rights to the patents. I thought this brought up an interesting point-- namely, if InterDigital is suing these companies worldwide, and it knows that there is no case in some of these countries, what seperates them from being a patent troll?
article is right here <http://www.fosspatents.com/2013/03/december-trial-scheduled-in.html>
That does sound like a troll indeed. The settlement amount for InterDigital will probably be material in relation to their yearly revenues, but will probably be chump change for the giant corporations they are suing. I wonder how they valuate the amount of 'damages' to sue for.
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