Slashdot Mirror
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.
This post comes with a double-your-money-back guarantee!
Any offense taken to this post is at your sole discretion.
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"
This is a company that made something like $26 billion in revenue last year. They're still a first-tier vendor for back-end equipment.
Maybe we should make some law that says a person's patents don't count, provided they stop making products that attract the attention of shallow cellphone trend blogs.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
No, that would be like trying to install modern plumbing in an outhouse. It's much better to burn down the old outhouse, and start again, with a new foundation.
Technology has evolved so much that the current system just doesn't fit and function in a beneficial way for all.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Last I checked Ericsson had close to 40% of the world-wide core network market, i.e. the stuff on the ground.
They also sit on a lot of Radio essential patents.
Samsung says they want a licence closer to the old one, but Ericsson has offered the same as they offer everyone else to Samsung now.
Ericsson also spun off their handset business as a joint venture with Sony quite a while ago and finally sold their half to Sony recently. So Ericsson and Samsung are no longer competitors in this area but they do compete on Ericssons core business.
If I have to guess, this complaint with the FCC is just there to provide leverage in the licence agreement discussions.
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.
Actually, the problem is the licensing of FRAND patents that Samsung had from Ericsson expired (Ericsson owns a few essential 3G onwards patents that are FRAND licensed). Samsung refused to relicense the patents.
It's not whether or not they're i the same market, it's that the S3 (and many others) use 3G and possibly LTE patents that belong to Ericsson, and that Samsung and Ericsson have failed to negotiate a new licensing agreement for said patents.
Just so you know, to make a cellphone you have to license a lot of patents from Ericsson, RIM, ex-Nortel (now Apple), Google/Motorola, Samsung, and the list goes on and on and on and on...
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.
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.
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.
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
That is because of the standards being reliant on patent technology. FRAND be damned. That whole concept needs to go away in standards. It isn't a standard if the barrier to entry is that minefield.
This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
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.