“Swedish telecom equipment maker Ericsson has filed lawsuits in Germany, Britain and the Netherlands against Apple over technology licence payments, Ericsson said on Friday, extending a U.S. battle between the firms to Europe,” Olof Swahnberg reports for Reuters.
“Ericsson said it had offered to enter into arbitration with Apple to reach a global licensing agreement for its patents, but that offer had now expired,” Swahnberg reports. “An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment on the legal action in the three European countries, which relates to 2G and 4G/LTE mobile communications standards and non-standardized technology, but referred to its statement in January. ‘Unfortunately, we have not been able to agree with Ericsson on a fair rate for their patents so, as a last resort, we are asking the courts for help,’ part of that statement said.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Let the courts decide.
Related articles:
With U.S. ITC probe, Ericsson’s long-shot bid to ban iPhone and iPad sales moves ahead – March 31, 2015
Ericsson sues Apple for patent infringement; seeks to ban iPhone sales in U.S. – February 27, 2015
Ericsson files complaint against Apple over tech license payments – January 14, 2015
Apple sues Ericsson over LTE wireless telecom patents – January 14, 2015
Interesting MDN Take ®, as MDN typically has nothing but disdain for the legal system, courts, and judges.
Apple needs to pay up. Apple is profiting from Ericsson innovations.
Apple didn’t like it when Google stole their ideas. Does this hypocrisy have something to do with Tim Cook?
Ericsson wants to charge Apple a higher license fee for this FRAND patent than it does other companies. That’s not how FRAND patents are supposed to work. When Ericsson got their tech incorporated into the cellular standard, they agreed to charge everyone a fair rate.
Translation from marketing ease:
“2G and 4G/LTE mobile communications standards”
Means
2G and 3G mobile communication standards. I don’t personally know of anywhere on the planet where the actual 4G standard is available for mobile communication. You can read about the bizarro ‘4G’ situation here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4G
Since the first-release versions of Mobile WiMAX and LTE support much less than 1 Gbit/s peak bit rate, they are not fully IMT-Advanced compliant, but are often branded 4G by service providers. <- AKA marketing.
…Mobile WiMAX Release 2 (also known as WirelessMAN-Advanced or IEEE 802.16m’) and LTE Advanced (LTE-A) are IMT-Advanced compliant backwards compatible versions of the above two systems, standardized during the spring 2011, and promising speeds in the order of 1 Gbit/s. Services were expected in 2013.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LTE_Advanced
According to the LTE Advanced article linked above, there are currently some LTE Advanced (real 4G compliant) cells in UK (via EE and Vodafone), Italy, Australia (via A1 and Optus), Russia, Chicago (USA via AT&T), Singapore, Switzerland, France, Czech Republic, Philippines, The Netherlands, Spain, Austria, Canada (Via Bell and Rogers), Latvia, Slovenia, Germany (via Telekom), Luxemburg, Qatar, Greece and Hong Kong. Several other locations and companies have announced plans.
For those interested, Russia was the first to make the leap in 2011. The summer of 2014 turned out to be the beginning of the wave of actual launches (versus mere plans) across the world.
The remaining problem with REAL 4G mobile, however, is obtaining compatible handset hardware. You’d have to talk to the local cell providers to see what they offer, if anything. It looks like Ericsson has the capacity to make compatible hardware, but I don’t yet know if they actually sell it yet. Anyone know?
In The Netherlands, with some providers 4G means fast internet, just as fast as ADSL. 100Mb is not unheard of. Fast enough to do anything with.
I have around 30 Mbps, depending upon the time of day. That’s fine for my uses. Locally, the best we can get without going ‘business class’ is 100 Mbps via wire/optical cable. Via mobile, we have 4G LTE speeds, but it’s expensive by comparison to wire/optical. For my uses, I stay off the Internet via mobile.