“Until now, it’s been assumed that Apple’s playing absolute hardball in its various patent lawsuits around the world — that the company has no interest in licensing its patents, especially patents that cover fundamental parts of iOS,” Nilay Patel reports for The Verge.
“Turns out that that’s not entirely true: Apple’s licensed at least one iOS software patent related to scrolling functionality to Nokia and IBM, and offered a license to Samsung during failed settlement negotiations in November 2010,” Patel reports. “The patent in question is #7,469,381, which covers the distinctive ‘scrollback’ behavior of iOS that displays a background texture when you scroll beyond the edge of a document of webpage.”
Patel reports, “The Verge that confirm the ‘381 patent was licensed to IBM and Nokia, and that Apple offered a license to Samsung in November of 2010 as part of settlement negotiations…What we don’t know is how or why those November 2010 settlement negotiations fell apart: Apple could have been asking for exorbitant rates on a patent license, Samsung could have refused to pay because it thought the patents were invalid, or Jobs could have simply called the whole thing off.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Fred Mertz” and “Dan K.” for the heads up.]
“What we don’t know is how or why those November 2010 settlement negotiations fell apart …”
According to Florian Mueller (i.e., my interpretation of Mueller’s comments), Apple says that it offered to license the 381 patent to Samsung as part of a larger settlement (on several issues) but Samsung refused the deal. Now, Apple’s unwilling to license this one patent to Samsung.
See the final three paragraphs of this Mueller article:
http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2011/12/denial-of-us-preliminary-injunction.html
Amazing what a little research can do. Thanks Thomas.
F’ing bloggers.
Still reckon Apple should license out the iPod clickwheel once they phase it out altogether.
Apple DOES have little interest in licensing out its IP; however, there are instances where they are engaged in IP battles with other companies where the other company may have patents that Apple may feel they would rather settle with an exchange of patents rather than fight each case to the bitter end, thus, an exchange. Recall, Apple and Nokia reached a settlement less than a year ago. I’d wager the 381 patent was part of the deal.
If you can’t beat them, join them…
Seriously !?!? A freaking patent for “background texture when you scroll beyond the edge of a document of webpage” ?
Patents have gotten way out of hand. That is absurd.