“There’s a surprise turn of events concerning the inadvertent-disclosures issue that became a high-profile sideshow in the global patent dispute between Apple and Samsung,” Florian Müller reports for FOSS Patents. “In late January, the United States District Court for the Northern District of California cleared Samsung but ordered its law firm in the Apple cases, Quinn Emanuel, to pick up the cost for Apple and Nokia’s efforts relating to the inadvertent disclosure of highly confidential Apple-Nokia patent license terms. The court concluded that Apple and Nokia had not delivered proof that Samsung’s licensing executives actually made use of that information in licensing negotiations between Samsung and Nokia. But the oversight by a QE associate (who has since left the firm) was deemed sanctionable.”
“Apple and Nokia were actually seeking draconian sanctions, which the court declined to impose,” Müller reports. “Late last month Apple also renewed a motion asking the ITC to impose sanctions on Samsung for the alleged use of that information in the investigation of Samsung’s complaint against Apple. The original motion and the renewed one are both sealed.”
Müller reports, “Here’s the latest, absolutely stunning development: Apple actually filed the terms of its Nokia license (as well as the terms of a license agreement with NEC) on a publicly-accessible court docket last October, where it remained for about four months until it was finally removed.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Mistakes will be made. While minor in the grand scheme of things, there are no two ways about it: This slip-up was Microsoftian.