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Samsung Offers Patent Cease-Fire in EU
dryriver sends this quote from the BBC:
"Samsung has said that it will stop taking rivals to court [in the E.U.] over certain patent infringements for the next five years. The white flag in the patent battle has been raised because the South Korean electronics firm faces a huge fine for alleged abuses of the system. The move could help end a long-running patent war between the world's largest mobile makers. The E.U. said that a resolution would bring 'clarity to the industry'. 'Samsung has offered to abstain from seeking injunctions for mobile SEPs (standard essential patents) for a period of five years against any company that agrees to a particular licensing framework,' the European Commission said in a statement. Standard essential patents refer to inventions recognised as being critical to implementing an industry standard technology. Examples of such technologies include the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS), a cellular standard at the heart of 3G data; and H.264, a video compression format used by YouTube, Blu-ray disks and Adobe Flash Player among others. The E.U. had accused the Samsung of stifling competition by bringing a series of SEP lawsuits against Apple and other rivals."
Oh grow up.
Apple's patents can all be worked around. However Standards Essential Patents (as indicated by their very name) cannot.
This is why any company that abuses the ones they have (such as Samsung) is a big deal.
"We agree to stop abusing SEP patents for five years. And then, once those five years have passed, we will return to abusing them as we have which lead us to this point."
How about Samsung stop abusing SEP patents and honour their FRAND promises. Period.
They're offer appears nice, on the face of things, but it is hollow in the long run. The EU response should be simple - you've broken your FRAND promises and abused your SEP patents. You are fined an enormous amount and if it happens again, you will be fined an enormous amount again until you understand that FRAND promises are vital to the industry's ability to grow and develop and breaking those promises undermines the entire foundation of Standards Essential Patents. Stop abusing them - drop every single SEP-based lawsuit against every manufacturer and do not launch another lawsuit seeking damages nor injunctions for SEP patents ever again - or be fined. Period.
So long as manufacturers can wield SEP patents that are covered by FRAND promises as a weapon, there's serious damage being done to the industry. If you want to use your patent as a weapon against your fellow manufacturers, don't offer them up to a standards body for inclusion in an industry standard and don't promise to license them under FRAND terms. You are under no obligation to do so. This situation isn't forced upon you. There are reasons companies want their patents in an industry standard, even with the FRAND limitations, and there are reasons companies want to keep patents close to their chest. Pick one. You can't have both. Attempting to have both is an abuse of SEP patents and a breach of FRAND promises.
So they stop the abuse, once. Now change the system to stop ALL the abuse. Make mandatory generic licensing a requirement of the patent system. And set the royalty rates to prevent abuse (FRAND). This is the only way to allow the inventor to benefit but without holding back civilization by the unreasonable.
What I'm wondering, is if the patents are so essential to an industry, why doesn't the government just come in and say "Hey Samsung, we're taking your patent. You are free to continue to use it without paying us any licensing fees, but we will also license it out to who ever we choose"? What is the benefit of letting Samsung keep the patent vs the method I just described?
No, Samsung is supposed to get a fair and reasonable license fee for these patents. And standard essential patents are not standard essential by magic. They are standard essential because a standard was created that uses the patent, and the patent holder agreed to it being included in the standard.
You've actually just made the case against Samsung.
Samsung did some really good technical work, which almost everyone wanted to copy, so they agreed that the patents involved were "Standards Essential Patents" which would be licensed to everyone cheap. Changing their minds and saying "OK, everybody bat Apple can use those patents," was simply something they agreed they weren't allowed to do when they agreed to have the patents declared standards. Basically they were trying to force their #1 competitor out of their #1 market, and the legal system is not supposed to tolerate that shit. Just look at Apple and it's conviction for eBook price-fixing.
OTOH Apple did a bunch of decent technical work, and some truly mind-blowing design work. Then they sued people on the basis of the design patents. Since they never agreed not to do that, and it was trivial for Samsung to design it's way around said patents once they realized that courts enforce design patents, Samsung got it's ass reamed in court and nobody is worried that Samsung will be forced out of the smartphone market.