“Late on Sunday, Samsung and Google announced a ten-year global patent license agreement,” Florian Müller writes for FOSS Patents. “As the announcement notes, they already have a ‘long-term cooperative partnership’ in place, so there was no immediate threat of litigation between them anyway.”
“The press release quotes IP executives from both companies who suggest that this agreement should serve as a model for the wider industry, as an alternative to patent litigation. Those quotes show that the intention here is primarily to make those look bad who enforce their patents,” Müller writes. “Tthe fact that Google and Samsung enter into a long-term cross-license agreement does not make them IP innovators or thought leaders.”
“Samsung and Google own a lot of patents, but they haven’t been able to gain much leverage from those patents against Apple, Microsoft and others,” Müller writes. “They have, however, lost a number of lawsuits, and just last week a U.S. judge found Samsung to fringe yet another Apple patent and invalidated one of Samsung’s patents-in-suit, ahead of a trial scheduled to start on March 31. One way to sum up the announcement would be this: ‘If you can’t beat ’em, just try to make ’em look bad.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Desperation heightens as the noose tightens.
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Apple’s products came first, then Samsung’s:
Here’s Google’s Android before and after Apple’s iPhone:
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