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Ericsson Seeks US Import Ban On Samsung Products
angry tapir writes "Just a few days after Ericsson filed several patent-infringement lawsuits against Samsung in the U.S., the Swedish mobile phone company also filed a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC), asking for an import ban of a wide range of Samsung products, including the Galaxy S III and the Galaxy Note. Ericsson alleges that Samsung violates Section 337 of the Tariff Act by importing patent-infringing products into the U.S and selling them."
If you can't beat 'em with a better product, litigate 'em.
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I believe Ericsson was a quite popular brand of phone in the dumbphone era, but their reputation has since died off.
Are companies that are unwilling to compete simply going to sue their competitors? Instead of devoting their resources to innovating, they're wasting their time and money on lawsuits while other companies are free to spend their time doing something interesting on their own.
Samsung sells a lot more than just phones, and I don't know if these companies are just trying to sue them into oblivion. If that is their plan, they obviously haven't planned it out very well.
How dare anyone out there sue Samsung, after all she's been through! She loves her Galaxy! She went through a lawsuit! She had many business partnerships, her customers turned out to be (sob) litigious and now she's going through an appeal.All you companies care about is patents and making money off of her! SHE'S A CORPORATION! What you don't realize is Samsung is making all this money and all you do is file a bunch of crap against her.
... is sucked up by lawyers and judicial staff by way of my handset manufacturer.
On any given day you can replace "handset manufacturer" with "OS vendor", "service provider", "app developer", etc.
This system stinks and it doesn't function in my interests as a consumer (or an engineer, for that matter).
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
world wide patent laws need to be reworked
It's just how mobile phone companies say "hello".
Well I just patented useing plumbing on computers and you must now pay me $5 for that post.
Yes that counts as plumbing on computers.
More innovation??? I can't stand it!
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
What comments like yours fail to consider is that Ericsson doesn't even have a horse in the handset race any more, which is a very important fact. They sold off their share of the Sony-Ericsson joint venture to Sony about a year ago (though the deal closed early this year) and have been doing just fine ever since, posting billions in profit with their bread-and-butter telecommunications equipment. They're out of the handset market and onto other things that are more focused on engineering and business-facing products than design and consumer-facing products.
As a result, they have nothing to gain by seeing Samsung fail, and they're doing just fine on their own, so this isn't a company who got beat turning patent troll. This is a case of a company outside the handset market who has legitimate patents based on actual engineering innovations having their patents used without proper licensing. There's nothing wrong in demanding that the company using your patents pay the licensing fees that are due, and why people ascribe them ulterior motives when they have nothing to gain is beyond me.
Samsung is kind of hard to compete with nowadays, they're like the Microsoft of the 90s
Samsung is nothing like Microsoft...In fact Microsoft is still Microsoft only in the phone world its FUD; Bully Tactics; Burning Partners have got it treated like a clown that gives you cancer by both carriers and customers
The sad thing in this market anyway they are closet to...what Nokia was and could have been, several fledging operating systems including the successer to Meego [Tizen]; its own [Bada] and even Windows...its just the Market wants Android.
If I was arguing beyond Phones I may even say Sony...but Microsoft never.
Wouldn't a US ban on Samsung products constitute a ban on... pretty much everything electronic? I doubt there's a single electrical device in your home that doesn't contain at least some Samsung components.
If anything, this highlights how Samsung are probably the ones making trouble in the Apple vs Samsung trials.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Perhaps Samsung should bypass all these attempts at import bans by doing the final assembly locally. The physical assembly can still be done wherever, but the potentially patent-infringing software can be loaded on in the destination country, so what is shipped overseas does not infringe on the patents.
Or even sell them with something other than Android on them, but with something simple that allows the carriers to update them upon activation. Then they aren't infringing on any software patents until after they are sold!
Even if you can build a better product, these days why bother? If you do create a better product you will just be sued anyway, so why not get a head of the curve and sue first?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
of interest though, apparently.
Ericsson is part of an alliance with Microsoft, Apple, and others who see Linux and Android as a threat to their business model.
http://www.microsoft.com/enterprise/partners/ericsson.aspx#fbid=LZQES70oV98
http://www.engadget.com/2011/07/01/rim-apple-sony-microsoft-consortium-snags-nortel-wireless-pat/
The whole point to to keep the litigation going as long as possible.
There's nothing wrong in demanding that the company using your patents pay the licensing fees that are due, and why people ascribe them ulterior motives when they have nothing to gain is beyond me.
Ascribing ulterior motives? May be, that's because they're playing hard ball and asking for an immediate import ban just before Christmas.
Samsung had a license for these patents but it has expired. Ericsson wants to significantly raise the license cost this time around and Samsung objects.
IANAL, but since these are patents that Samsung used to license, and that license agreement has lapsed, it might not need a court ruling to prove that the products do infringe upon these patents.
s/Samsung/Ericsson/g - this is a bait and switch tactic by Ericsson; license FRAND patents for a low cost at first, then try to increase the rates later. Samsung should be commended for standing up to them, even if no other manufacturers have.
Seriously, how else can a free market possibly be free if silly things like patents and copyrights get in the way. If people think you are worth the higher bucks, then higher bucks they will pay. This getting governments involved to enforce monopolies is totally gotten out of hand.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Have just successfully argued that Samsung can't get an injunction against Microsoft products because blah blah financial remedy table pound, say, Your Honor, y'all hail from Seattle, right?
I wish Ericsson all that they deserve to get from lying down with rats.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Ericsson no longer makes phones. They're a highly profitable company building cell phone networks with lots of patents in the wireless tech-sphere. Samsung and Ericsson are not, in other words, direct competitors and this is not a case of competing through the courts. Key part from TFA:
"The suits were filed because Ericsson said it could not reach a license agreement for its patents with Samsung on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms after two years of negotiations. Samsung was asked to pay the same rate as its competitors, but Samsung refused, according to Ericsson.
"Samsung had licensed Ericsson patents before. However, according to a statement released by Samsung last week, Ericsson demanded 'significantly higher royalty rates for the same patent portfolio,' adding that it planned to 'take all necessary legal measures to protect against Ericsson's excessive claims.'"
This is purely about the money. The two companies stopped negotiating, Samsung is betting that going to court (they must have known a lawsuit was coming) will end up better for them than paying Ericsson's fee.
From TFA:
The suits were filed because Ericsson said it could not reach a license agreement for its patents with Samsung on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms after two years of negotiations. Samsung was asked to pay the same rate as its competitors, but Samsung refused, according to Ericsson.
Samsung had licensed Ericsson patents before. However, according to a statement released by Samsung last week, Ericsson demanded "significantly higher royalty rates for the same patent portfolio," adding that it planned to "take all necessary legal measures to protect against Ericsson's excessive claims."
Samsung used to license these patents, then stopped paying. They knew a lawsuit was coming, and decided it was a fight worth taking. I have no clue whether the fees requested by Ericsson are unreasonable or not - but there's no need for conspiracy theories or ulterior motives on this one.
... and have been doing just fine ever since...
October 26th 2012 - Ericsson Profit Drops 43%
July 18th 2012 - Ericsson Profit Drops 64%
As a result, they have nothing to gain by seeing Samsung fail, and they're doing just fine on their own, so this isn't a company who got beat turning patent troll. This is a case of a company outside the handset market who has legitimate patents based on actual engineering innovations having their patents used without proper licensing. There's nothing wrong in demanding that the company using your patents pay the licensing fees that are due, and why people ascribe them ulterior motives when they have nothing to gain is beyond me.
Then why are they seeking an import ban instead of just license fees?
They're the same industry. Telecommunications. Ericsson make cellphone networks. Samsung make cellphones that use those networks. If Samsung doesn't need Ericsson's patents, how do they make cellphones the work on cellphone networks? You know, those little things like GSM, WCDMA, GPRS, LTE and EGDE.
If patents in this area were stifling innovation, why is it just about every other cellphone manufacturer pays for them? Society has gained from these patents. There are but a few cellular network technologies world wide. This means manufactures, for a fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory price can sell phones that work on networks in every country in the world. That's the part that promotes innovation. There is no discrimination for any company wishing to obtain a license and everyone pays the same amount. The playing field is level.
You obviously have no idea what you're on about
The one that supplies most of the cellphone network equipment. The same one that owns patents for all the current cellphone network technology
Numbers out of context are a dangerous thing.
The BusinessWeek number is for year-over-year change (as you'll see if you check Ericsson's Q3 2012 financial report, so of course their net income dropped by 43%: they were still in the handset business at that time the previous year. Yet if you check their quarter-over-quarter change, you'll see that they're up 81% in terms of net income in just the last three months, indicating that they're recovering nicely from the restructuring involved with divesting themselves of their handset business, and even the analyst quoted in the BusinessWeek article agrees that they're in a good position right now, saying:
Still, the company has a good foundation and once the business mix improves, with the rising use of smartphones around the world, margins and profits will rebound.
I'll grant that they're not as profitable as they were when they were in the handset business, but that doesn't change the fact that they're doing just fine and making billions in profit, just as I said. As for the WSJ article, I can't load it for some reason, but since it's dated earlier and they've been steadily improving, I assume the issue is the same, in that it likely used year-over-year numbers that come from when they were still in another business.
STOCKHOLM—Telefon AB L.M. Ericsson, the world's largest maker of telecommunications equipment, posted a 64% drop in second-quarter net profit as a slowdown in demand weighed on results.
Ericsson said Wednesday that its challenges included weak sales in key markets such as Russia, China, India and Western Europe. The Stockholm-based company also cited margin pressure in North America and other markets amid waning demand for code-division multiple access, or CDMA, technology as operators shift to newer alternatives. In addition, the company's ST-Ericsson joint venture, which sells modems, continued to report losses.
I'd say their profit drops are at least in part due to Huawei's increasing market share. Their sale of the Sony-Ericsson division wouldn't do much. It lost a billion dollars in 2009 and has been steadily dropping in sales numbers since then.
If Huawei is let into the USA market, they might have problems.
After the Verge's great article on Samsung's history of corruption and now this?
Apple's kind of mean, and maybe possibly evil but this is undeniable.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Meanwhile, Nokia drops case vs Xtrauf, proud US makers of rubberboots.
Nokia: We found out their boots were actually made in China.
http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/alaskans-say-xtratuf-boots-lost-trademark-durability-after-manufacturing-move-china
Nokia: while we haven't been in the rubberboot business for decades, we felt we needed to, just like Ericsson with phones, make our _former_ presence heard.
Q: What have the damages to you been from Xtraufs move to China?
Nokia: Why ask us? Ask that question to Sony who have NEVER been selling rubber boots.
Q: Huh?
Nokia: That's our point.
Ascribing ulterior motives? May be, that's because they're playing hard ball and asking for an immediate import ban just before Christmas.
Who gets mobile networks for christmas?
Since the R in FRAND means "Reasonable", the question is whether increasing the licensing fee beyond administrative costs and inflation is reasonable.
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The US has hundreds of ports of entry and most of them aren't secured in any meaningful way.
For the last 15 years or so it has been illegal to import unlicensed DVD players. Philips gets $5 for each player license. When you buy a DVD player that costs less than about $50 it is clearly unlicensed - there is no room in the pricing structure for Philips to get $5 from the manufacturer. So, what is the US doing about this? Well, it is illegal to import these things so there is a complete import ban on these devices.
You can go to Walmart and see how well that is working out.
Does Ericsson really believe an import ban is going to change sales in the US? I don't think it will matter to the retailers where the phones are sold and they will certainly continue to stream into the US. The US considers border control to be something for other countries to worry about. This is partly why the US is a prime destination for (a) illegal drugs, (b) sex trafficing, (c) counterfeit products, (d) banned weapons, (e) etc.
If you can easily bring 10 girls in for duty as prostitutes there should be no problem bringing in a few Samsung phones. And I am sure Samsung is counting on that.
You know, those little things like GSM, WCDMA, GPRS, LTE and EGDE.
So you're saying that Ericsson has patents on required standards. That means they're supposed to be fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory in the licensing. Samsung isn't renewing the license (they were paying before) because Ericsson is supposedly significantly increasing the rates (according to Samsung).
Is Ericsson significantly increasing Samsung's license rates for a FRAND patent? Is this a level playing field?
Unix is user friendly, it's just selective about who its friends are.
Ericsson are claiming they offered Samsung what their other licensees pay.
If others are paying the same licensing fees, then it is reasonable.
If this had been Apple vs Samsung, I bet the majority of the responses would be along the lines of, "Apple should pay up".
So they significantly increased the rates for everyone (non-discriminatory)? Why were they increased (fair/reasonable)?
Unix is user friendly, it's just selective about who its friends are.
Samsung did not base anything it did from reading any of the patents that Ericsson has. It did not copy anything. It came up with some ideas and implemented them because those ideas fall within the scope of what Samsung does. Samsung never needed 'help' from Ericsson
that really doesn't matter when it comes to patents. it's whoever has the patent. otherwise, the whole system breaks down because you could never prove that someone had inspiration from another patent / prove they didn't just think of the idea on their own in the shower one morning.
maybe you want the system to break down, and that's a different point that i'm not commenting on here.
I guess we'll find out in the court case, unless it gets settled.