“On Thursday Apple successfully defended itself against the assertion of a standard-essential patent (SEP) by Samsung in Japan,” Florian Mueller reports for FOSS Patents. “On a global scale this was Samsung’s 22nd SEP assertion to have been dismissed, dropped or stayed.”
“It was the first pro-FRAND ruling by an Asian court that I’ve ever heard of,” Mueller reports. “And now that Apple has filed a redacted translation of the relevant passages of the Tokyo District Court’s ruling, it turns out that it’s also the first time in the earth-spinning Apple-Samsung dispute for Samsung to be found to have abused the standard-setting process through untimely disclosures.”
Mueller writes, “Even if the [U.S] ITC felt that the Japanese court’s findings have no bearing on what the appropriate conclusions should be under U.S. law and the statute governing the ITC (Section 337), at the very least this first Asian pro-FRAND decision has considerable political weight. It would be more than just odd if a U.S. government agency that was originally set up to protect the domestic industry became the first entity in the world to grant Samsung enforceable (after a 60-day Presidential review) injunctive relief against Apple. Even in Korea the two injunctions Samsung had won were stayed pending an appeal. In the Netherlands Samsung will have to content itself with a minor amount of damages, and in the rest of the world it hasn’t won anything with its SEPs to date.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Effin’ miracles do happen!
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