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Aussie Judge Declares Apple-Samsung Patent Battles "Ridiculous"
New submitter Ahab's compliments writes "Score another point for sensible judges — the judge in point wants to know why this dispute over the wireless technologies developed by Samsung and used by Apple shouldn't be settled through mediation. 'Why on earth are these proceedings going ahead?' Bennett asked the lawyers in court today. 'It's just ridiculous.' The judge also rejected a request to hear the various patent infringement claims from either side in separate cases."
Samsung is just defending themselves. If someone attacks you, and you hit them back in an attempt to get them to stop, I'm not going to call you a violent person.
Boycott Apple.
It is absurd if a patent set up in the first country must be recognised in a second country, but the second country does not have the power to declare an invalidation which is also recognised in the first.
The implication is that it is more important to create patents (no matter how absurd they are) than to repeal bad patents.
There are many problems of this sort with inter-state EU legislation, too.
Indeed. Congratulations on spotting one of the many imbalances in the current system.
Indeed this is the status quo: if something is patented in one country, other countries have agreed that they too will honor the patent. Yet if something is *invalidated* in one country, there is no requirement that this invalidation is honored elsewhere. And this is true despite it being easy, simple and cheap to get a patent, compared to the enormous expense and close scrutiny that goes into getting one invalidated.
In other news: why does the berne convention only specify that countries should have a minimum length of copyright, and that countries that have too *short* protection are in violation - while saying nothing at all about the maximum duration and allowing countries to set copyright to a million years with no issues. Where's the -balance- in that ?
Samsung tried to double dip on Standards Essential Patents.
Samsung disagree - they say that Qualcomm never even had a patent license - what they did have was a mutual "no-sue" contract which covered their customers, and that was terminated once their customer (Apple) sued Samsung. Given that Apple subsequently approached Samsung to licence these very patents, it would appear that Samsung's interpretation is correct, otherwise why would Apple bother?
Samsung counsel Neil Young today admitted that Qualcomm, which supplies chips to Apple, had an agreement with Samsung whereby the Korean tech giant would not sue Qualcomm or its customers for infringement on 3G patents. According to court documents, this agreement was first made back in 1993.
"There was an agreement between Samsung and Qualcomm. That agreement was not a licence agreement. It contains a contractual provision that Samsung would not sue Qualcomm or customers of Qualcomm who apply [the 3G patents]," Young said.
Samsung stated that this agreement was terminated in April 2011, with notice provided to Qualcomm, when Apple first filed proceedings against the Galaxy Tab in California.
Samsung sacrificed Qualcomm truce for Apple war