“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.