Apple must share HTC settlement details with Samsung

Jos

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A few days ago Apple and HTC settled a longstanding patent dispute that resolved all current lawsuits between them and resulted in a 10-year licensing deal to share existing and future patents. Financial details were kept under wraps, and though analyst believe Apple will receive $6 to $8 per phone sold from HTC, the latter has called those estimates ‘outrageous’. Well, Samsung's lawyers will soon know for sure.

The South Korean firm has been granted permission to examine the full details of the settlement ahead of a  forthcoming hearing on December 6. Although Samsung mobile chief Shin Jong-kyun recently said they have no intention of negotiating a similar deal, the company is hoping to find out whether the agreement with HTC covers licenses that Apple was unwilling to negotiate with Samsung.

According to Florian Müller from Foss Patents, “willingness to license certain patents can play a role in an injunctive relief analysis.” Apple already won a $1.05 billion judgement over Samsung in the US and it is seeking to ban eight of Samsung’s devices from sale in the country. Although there’s no guarantee of the outcome, if Samsung is right the documents could prove instrumental for its defense against an injunction, as they would show Apple is willing to license its IP to others as long as it gets paid -- and since they will be receiving a payout in connection with the verdict they can argue the extra step of an injunction isn't justified.

Apple and HTC had previously agreed to provide a redacted version of the license agreement to the court, specifically omitting information about the license fees that HTC is paying Apple under the agreement.

This is just one angle of Samsung’s escalating legal battle with Apple. A separate case in the U.S. is due to start sometime next year over standards-essential patents and several feature-specific patents in several of each company’s latest products, including up to the Galaxy S III, iPhone 5 and iPad mini. The International Trade Commission is also set to review the September decision that favored Apple.

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This is interesting. How can Samsung sue apple for technology use it is selling to apple. If you manufacture parts for my electronics and supply then to my company and you are building stuff to my specks how can you even claim those patents. Also how would you think that building things to my specks all of the sudden grants you the right to copy those things and release competing products on the side. This is exactly what I think happen with samsung and apple same thing micro soft pulled with apple when apple pay them to write software and all the sudden microsoft release windows 95 which is totally like apple os with slight modifications. You click on an object on the desk top and a program opens. Many people claim that this was Xeroxes. What they fail to mention is that xerox after a failure to market the invention invite apple engineers and practically gave a presentation of the tech and told apple engineers to try to market it and make it usable for home users. There is a documentary on this. I found a recording of this presentation on you tube. This cannot be faked for the video quality was like something from the 70's. This was the actual original recording of the presentation. Well my other take on this is that I think corporations should be encouraged to share and use best technologies on all electronics and stop these unfair competitions where they try to destroy each other by exclusions. Nether samsung nor apple or micro soft or any of these giants behave good. But in my opinion apple is defending their innovations which they fail to do with microsoft and almost got bankrupted by it. Samsung is no doubt copied a lot of the phone designs. The finger control and flicking that is just totally iPhone thing and now all smart phones use it. Even though this slogan was not apples. This was an ad of a phone book I remember of in Chicago. Bell South used to have these ads sloganed. Let your finger do the walking. Meaning your finger flicking the phone book pages. I wonder if that inspire the iOS developers to use that as a means of smart phone control. Also this is totally unrelated businesses. Phone books and smart phones. So it would be hard to call it Apple ripping off the phone book idea. But with iOS and android it is an easier call. Hope the judges stick it to both of them. But in that case all consumers loose. Soon it will show up in the phone price. The iPhone being $800. At that price the phone better drive you to work.
 
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