Legal Archive

In September 2011, the two companies entered a seven-year cross-licensing agreement for mobile-related patents. The payments for the first year were made without fuss. In August 2013, Samsung told Microsoft that it had assessed the value of the royalties owed for the second year as over $1 billion. Payment of this fee was due in October, but Microsoft says that no payment was received until late November 2013. Redmond's complaint says that Samsung owes more than $6.9 million in interest fees for the late payment (per the terms of the original licensing agreement).

What changed between August and October? In September 2013, Microsoft announced that it was buying Nokia's Devices division. The software giant asserts that Samsung is both claiming that Nokia's devices are not covered by the cross-licensing deal - and hence violating Samsung's own patents - and that the Nokia purchase voids the licensing agreement in its entirety.

At this stage, the Commission considers that the measure at issue appears to constitute a reduction of charges that should normally be borne by the entities concerned in the course of their business, and should therefore be considered as operating aid. According to the Commission practice, such aid cannot be considered compatible with the internal market in that it does not facilitate the development of certain activities or of certain economic areas, nor are the incentives in question limited in time, digressive or proportionate to what is necessary to remedy to a specific economic handicap of the areas concerned.

The Commission wishes to remind Ireland that Article 108(3) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union has suspensory effect, and would draw your attention to Article 14 of Council Regulation (EC) No 659/199935, which provides that all unlawful aid may be recovered from the recipient.

Four Silicon Valley companies including Apple and Google failed to persuade a U.S. judge to sign off on a $324.5 million settlement to resolve a lawsuit by tech workers, who accused the firms of conspiring to avoid poaching each other's employees.

In a ruling on Friday, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California, said the class action settlement was too low, given the strength of the case against the companies. Intel and Adobe were also part of the proposed deal.

"Samsung and Apple have agreed to drop all litigation between the two companies outside the United States," the two companies said in a joint statement to The Verge. "This agreement does not involve any licensing arrangements, and the companies are continuing to pursue the existing cases in U.S. courts."

Catmull's deposition and emails from the lawsuit confirm that he was instrumental in operating a secret wage-theft cartel that violated the Sherman Antitrust Act. But it's even worse than you think. The cartel orchestrated in large part by Catmull robbed potential wages and job opportunities from thousands of animation industry workers at other studios, including DreamWorks, Lucasfilm, Robert Zemeckis’ ImageMovers, the now-defunct Orphanage, and Walt Disney Animation Studios.

A coalition of technology companies large and small has created a sort of arms-control treaty to prevent future abuses of their intellectual property.

Among Google, Canon, SAP, Newegg, Dropbox and Asana, there are nearly 300,000 patent assets on the line. But the companies aren't licensing all of each others' patents today. Instead, by agreeing to join the License on Transfer network, they promise to grant licenses to one another whenever one of those patents is sold.

The patent claimed a method of hedging against counter-party risk, which is a fancy word for the risk that you make a deal with someone and later he doesn't uphold his end of the bargain. The Supreme Court unanimously held that you can't patent an abstract concept like this merely by stating that the hedging should be done on a computer. This kind of abstract patent is depressingly common in the software industry, and the CLS ruling will cause lower courts to take a harder look at them.

Apple Inc and Google Inc's Motorola Mobility unit have agreed to settle all patent litigation between them over smartphone technology, ending one of the highest profile lawsuits in technology.

In a joint statement on Friday, the companies said the settlement does not include a cross license to their respective patents.

"Apple and Google have also agreed to work together in some areas of patent reform," the statement said.

Contrary to the image it has cultivated in the popular press, Apple has admitted in internal documents that its strength is not in developing new technologies first, but in successfully commercializing them. When Apple was developing its campaign to promote the first iPhone, it considered - and rejected - advertisements that touted alleged Apple "firsts" with the iPhone. As one Apple employee explained to an overly exuberant Apple marketer, "I don't know how many things we can come up with that you can legitimately claim we did first. Certainly we have the first successful versions of many features, but that's different than launching something to market first." In this vein, the employee methodically explained that Palm, Nokia and others had first invented the iPhone's most prominent features.

When a federal jury two years ago clobbered Samsung with nearly $1 billion in damages for violating Apple's iPhone and iPad patent rights, the jury foreman emphasized that the verdict was meant to send a strong message about copying in the tech industry.

But there was no such deliberate message in the verdict in the latest patent showdown between Apple and Samsung that drew to an end on Monday, according to jurors who spoke outside the federal courthouse after finishing their role. In fact, the jury foreman said the mixed verdict in the trial sequel was not intended to send any broader message in the smartphone wars.

"Ultimately, the consumer is the loser in all this," Dunham said. "I'd like to see them find a way to settle. I hope this (verdict) in some way helps shape that future."

The jury found Samsung's gadgets infringed Apple's '647 patent, but not the '959 patent or '414 patent. Results were mixed for the '721 patent, with some Samsung devices, such as the Galaxy Nexus, found to infringe, and others not.

The jury awarded Apple only $119.6 million for the infringement.

A Google lawyer testified on Tuesday that the software maker, pursuant to its contractual obligations, agreed to take over defense of some of the claims in Apple’s current patent lawsuit as well as to indemnify Samsung should it lose on those claims.

Apple played deposition testimony from Google lawyer James Maccoun, who verified emails in which Google agreed to provide partial or full indemnity with regard to four patents as well as to take over defense of those claims.

Called the Partnership for American Innovation, the group warned that steps to stop the PAEs could also hurt truly innovative companies.

Companies signing on to the effort so far are Apple Inc., DuPont, Ford Motor Co., General Electric, IBM Corp, Microsoft Corp and Pfizer Inc.

In particular, the group would oppose efforts to make software or biotechnology unpatentable.

Google, Cisco and other supporters of efforts to curb frivolous patent litigation from PAEs, often termed "patent trolls," supported a bill that easily passed the U.S. House of Representatives in December.

Apple was awarded just over $1 billion in damages, though that figure was later cut down to $939.8 million after the judge pointed out errors in the way the jury did its math. Those damages were retried, and came in lower than the original figure, though the entire amount has since been appealed, and Samsung hasn't paid a penny. Alongside that, Apple and Samsung failed to win bans against one another's products in the US, making the first trial seem like nothing more than a legal spectacle.

But in the midst of all that was a very real threat: another lawsuit, one that targeted more successful devices from both companies, and used easy-to-understand patents covering basic software features. Apple filed it against Samsung in February 2012, targeting 17 devices. Samsung responded in kind, and this week the pair go head to head once again; the outcome could be very different. Here's what to expect over the next weeks and months as these two titans clash again in California's courts.