Today, I read an article from Foss Patents blog about Samsung and Ericsson and their battle in the smartphone patent wars. Ericsson brought up two complaints against Samsung in federal court in November last year. This week, after a small delay due to Samsung receiving an extension, Samsung responded to the complaints and introduced counterclaims asserting eight of their own patents, among them are U.S. Patent No. 8,169,986 on a "Method And Apparatus For Transmitting And Receiving System Information In A Mobile Communication System" and U.S. Patent No. 8,179,780
on a "Method And Apparatus For Transmitting And Receiving Control
Information To Randomize Inter-Cell Interference In A Mobile
Communication System."
Additionally, Samsung said some pretty aggressive comments about Ericsson, saying:
"Ericsson has recently jettisoned its mobile phone business and it now
feels unhinged as a non-practicing entity in the mobile phone market to
extort vastly unreasonable and discriminatory license fees from Samsung
under threat of product exclusion resulting from a simultaneously filed
complaint in the U.S. International Trade Commission ('ITC'). Ericsson's
misguided actions epitomize the patent 'hold up'
problem that has been the recent subject of wide discussion within
standard-setting organizations and other authorities around the globe" and "Ericsson seeks to dismantle the standard-setting framework with
unreasonable and discriminatory license demands from a willing licensee
under threat of product exclusion."
Overall, these are pretty harsh accusations towards Ericsson, and I am curious to see if Ericsson has a response to this. I didn't realize that, after Ericsson sold its mobile phone section to Sony, it would become an NPE, but Samsung's comments accuse them of being trolls.
I look forward to seeing how these lawsuits play out.
Wow, calling another company a patent troll seems like pretty serious allegations. Per the definition we received in class, Ericksson would have to be suing Samsung despite Samsung not infringing upon any patent. Are they really doing that? If not, Samsung may be using the term "patent troll" too loosely
ReplyDeleteIt could be that Samsung is trying to make a strong statement to the public that will make the public stand on their sides. I still do not know whether it is appropriate to accuse Ericsson to be a patent troll. If Samsung turns out to wrongfully accuse Ericsson, maybe Ericsson will sue them for the wrong accusation, since it definitely impacts on Ericsson's public image.
ReplyDelete