“Earlier today, Dutch IDG website Webwereld reported on a court ruling in The Hague that finds Apple liable for infringement of one of four patents Samsung is asserting in that action,” Florian Mueller reports for FOSS Patents.
“The Rechtbank’s-Gravenhage (The Hague) found Apple liable for infringing, only with pre-iPhone-4S devices, EP1188269 on an ‘apparatus for encoding a transport format combination indicator for a communication system’ (but cleared Apple of infringement of three other 3G/UMTS-essential Samsung patents),” Mueller reports. “All patent assertions by Samsung against Apple that previously came to judgment were dismissed. Samsung failed to win preliminary injunctions against the iPhone 4S in France and Italy, and lost three cases in Germany, including one over the same patent that the Dutch court now held infringed.”
Mueller reports, “Samsung has approximately 100,000 patents worldwide. At some point it had to win something. But it’s important to put this into perspective. Looking at the wider dispute with more than 50 complaints filed in ten countries on four continents, the impact of today’s ruling is minimal (and the word ‘minimal’ is more likely to be an exaggeration than an understatement). It’s not even clear that Samsung will make enough money as a result of this infringement finding to offset the 800,000 euros it now owes Apple in legal fees because it lost with respect to three of its four patents.”
Much more in the full article here.
Apple shiuld sue the Dutch courts for ignorance and bastardization of FRAND
Why? Frand does not mean free. Apple did not pay in this case. They should now be able to negotiate FAIRLY without pending market removal.
You cant negotiate ‘fairly’ when youre being expected to pay extortive prices that do not compare to any other user’s fee for the same FRAND patents. That’s blatant abuse of term and tantamountto blatant extortion. So Apple defered payment and now can effectively FORCE Samsung to accept ONLY fair reasonable fees, which is all Apple expected from the get go.
Such a minimal win that it still essentially lost.
Justice comes slowly
I would say Samsung lost very badly here. Now they have a court breathing down their neck to make sure they license this FRAND tech in a very reasonably manner (which is all Apple wanted in the first place). They would have gotten off better by just negotiating a price with Apple outside of a court room.
It’s also possible that in the very near future, the methods that Samsung has employed here with it’s FRAND patents (attempting to get inductive relief for instance) could backfire on them. They might be punished by the courts for abuse of FRAND patents.
They are expected to license FRAND patents in a Fair Reasonable Non Discriminatory manner: ie. Apple won.
Apple won a similar case against Nokia and the Tech media inaccurately reported that as a Nokia win.
It’s simple, if Apple can force all the FRAND patent holders to license their FRAND tech freely and cheaply while keeping their own proprietary patents in play, they win the Smartphone wars. Game over.
Agreed. I also had heard it was possible for abuse of FRAND patents (the way Samsung and some others are attempting to do, by using them as extortion), to result in the loss of the patent.
Oh, good! I want to hear Siri and S-Voice get into a big pissing match over it. Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t Samsung make Apple’s Retina screen and its A5X processor? Isn’t this little kerfuffle a lot like watching professional wrestling?
I believe Sharp actually makes Apple’s Retina displays. Also I doubt that Samsung will be making chips for Apple in the long run. I’m betting Apple signed some sort of contract to use Samsung as the chip fab for a certain amount of years before all this went down. They just have to wait for that to run out before they drop Samsung like the sack of crap they are.
I was wrong about the display. The Retina display on the new MacBook Pro is Sharp technology, made by LG. Still, Apple and Samsung are both making a ton of money off each other. You’d think they could come to some reasonable accommodation.
..as in Fair Reasonable AND
tcarlson-
“You’d think they could come to some reasonable accommodation.”
I think that is what Apple has wanted all along; stop stealing our our ideas & property, and license FRAND patents on the terms you agreed to when the patents were declared part of a standard.
Samsung is the one misbehaving here (stealing and attempting to extort using FRAND patents)
Moreover I think that apple will only continue to source components as long as it is essential to the quality of the product. Like google they are like a greedy child who wants it all, and they will undoubtedly suffer (heavily) in the long run for their behavior.
What did they win – that they don’t have to change their name to Samesung?