“In the context of Friday’s dismissal of a Japanese Apple lawsuit against Samsung, I mentioned (as I previously did on other occasions) that the problem of the Android camp in general and Samsung in particular is that they can’t score meaningful offensive wins against Apple,” Florian Mueller writes for FOSS Patents. “Fending off patent lawsuits is not enough when facing a company with a fast and large-growing portfolio of relevant patents. Defensive wins merely delay the inevitable.”
“What Samsung needs are enforceable injunctions over impactful non-standard-essential patents. Thus far, Samsung hasn’t won any injunction of that kind,” Mueller writes. “It previously relied largely on standard-essential patents (SEPs), and a Korea Times report published on Friday suggests that Samsung is once again contemplating a multijurisdictional push for preliminary injunctions against a new iPhone (or iPad 4G): ‘Samsung confirmed that it will immediately sue Apple if the latter releases products using advanced long-term evolution (LTE) mobile technology.'”
Mueller writes, “It tried this trick last year with 3G patent assertions against the iPhone 4S, with a hit rate of zero. I would strongly discourage Samsung from trying to use 4G/LTE-essential patents to shut down the iPhone 5. It won’t improve Samsung’s position. It will only make things worse, especially with antitrust regulators. In my view, the reasonable approach for Samsung would be to sue for FRAND royalties over its SEPs, not injunctions.”
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