“A prominent patent law blogger has again raised the argument that Apple’s patented features have very little value, while stopping short of saying that Samsung should just stop using the infringing technology,” Daniel Eran Dilger writes for AppleInsider. “Repeating an opinion from early March, FOSS Patents blogger Florian Mueller has again railed against Apple’s demands for patent royalty claims against Samsung writing that he was ‘not just disappointed but even angry’ about the amount Apple was asking. Applying Apple’s proposed royalty rate to a Samsung device that infringed all five patents would amount to around $40, a figure Mueller contrasted with Samsung’s ‘SEP royalty demand of approximately $12 per device (for a whole portfolio of wireless SEPs).'”
“Mueller is now comparing Samsung’s ‘trivial’ SEP demand for one patent against Apple’s total demands for five patents covering features Samsung didn’t just accidentally run afoul of, but rather purposely pulled from its Copy Cat iPhone studies as features it needed in its own products in order to be competitive with Apple’s iPhone,” Dilger writes. “Apple is asking for less per patent (an average of $8) than Samsung was demanding for its FRAND licensed, standard essential baseband patent involving a chip that cost less to buy than Samsung’s $16 royalty demand.”
“There are other patent comparisons we can use to evaluate the relative merits of Apple’s damages claim. Last year, Apple was hit with a $368 million patent verdict related to a claim from VirnetX involving VPN connectivity. VirnetX does not practice its technology, it merely sues companies for money. VirnetX’s patent was filed in 2007 and actually granted just days before the company rushed it into court against Apple,” Dilger writes. “There has been no significant public scrutiny of VirnetX’s claims, no anonymous defense from the open source community seeking to invalidate its nebulous ownership claims related to VPN, no clownish liveblogging of the trial and, while Mueller tweeted the verdict, he didn’t appear to have blogged any outrage over the damages figure VirnetX was awarded.”
Read more in the full article here.