Apple and Samsung may be close to reaching an agreement that would settle all patent infringement lawsuits out of court, claims Kim Yoo-chul of The Korea Times (Via Fortune). This account follows a previous report from late last week that Apple and Google/Motorola have reached an agreement to drop all ongoing litigation between the two companies.
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Samsung and Apple are reportedly in the early stages of negotiation with some key details on royalty payments still under negotiation.
"Samsung has recently resumed working-level discussions with Apple and the key issue is how to dismiss all lawsuits," one source said, declining to be named.
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"Some more time will be needed to fix terms of details such as royalty payments in return for using patents owned by each before reaching a full agreement."
Apple and Samsung recently faced off in a California court as part of the second US patent infringement lawsuit between the two companies. In the case that concluded earlier this month, the jury found that Samsung willfully infringed on three of the five Apple patents involved in the lawsuit and ordered the Korean company to pay Apple a sum of $119.6 million. Apple also was found guilty of infringing on one of Samsung's patents with damages totaling $158,400.
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That does not change the fact that Apple has stalled paying royalties for years, and that judges have negatively commented that Apple has been using the court system to try to lower the rates they'll have to pay.
Patent abuse is patent abuse, whether it's essential or not.
It's just as bad when a SEP holder tries for a intra-negotiation injunction, as when a non-SEP holder runs around suing everyone with similar solutions.
As Judge Posner put it, "You can't just assume that just because someone has a patent, he has deep moral right to exclude everyone else from using it."
I would add that I think this goes double for software patents.
Not being able to get an injunction against Apple, does not mean Motorola won't get paid by Apple. Apple still owes royalties no matter what, and they've been piling up every day for years. Only now, Apple owes those back royalties to Google, since they own the patents.
This has indeed been covered many times before:
Apple refused to cross license. That's their decision, but Apple wanted to be treated special and pay the same lower rates that others got by cross-licensing.
That's hardly fair to the other companies.