“As expected, the Office of Unfair Import Investigations (OUII, commonly referred to as the ‘ITC staff’) and Samsung oppose Apple’s motion to stay the ITC’s remedial orders over a FRAND-pledged standard-essential patent (SEP),” Florian Müller writes for FOSS Patents. “The ITC staff takes the same positions as in the build-up to the import ban, which the Commission adopted (at least the staff’s latest filing does mention Commissioner Pinkert’s dissent).Samsung’s opposition brief, which I have uploaded to Scribd, shows a serious antitrust issue that no public filing or statement by Samsung itself revealed before in such a flagrant form.”
“Now that the ITC has failed to ensure consistency of its position on tying with established antitrust principles, Samsung still doesn’t have the right to take extortionate positions,” Müller writes, “which comes down to saying: ‘Apple, you have three choices. You can pay us 2.4% on a cash-only basis. You can give us a cross-license on terms you don’t like. Or you’ll face exclusion of your older iPhones and iPads in a few weeks.'”
Müller writes, “This. Is. Hold-up.”
“The European Commission has done a far better job protecting consumers in its market. Last December Samsung withdrew all of its SEP-based injunction requests pending in the European Union. Nevertheless the European Commission issued a Statement of Objections (SO),” Müller writes. “By contrast, the DOJ has been doing nothing. At some point it has to intervene. If it tolerates this kind of extortionate conduct for much longer, some people may start to wonder whether the current U.S. government (including, in a different context, U.S. Customs & Border Protection) is more loyal to Google than to U.S. consumers and the U.S. economy.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Where’s the U.S. DOJ? Siting around with their thumb up their collective ass when they’re not actively making bad decisions, as usual. A fish rots from the head down.
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