Published: 10/23/15Publication: FOSS PatentsTen days ago, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit granted summary affirmance (i.e., summary judgment at the appellate stage) of Judge Koh's decision to let Apple collect $450 million from Samsung (against a bond posted years ago) even though one of the patents underlying the related [...]
Published: 9/30/15Publication: CNETMicrosoft and Google have agreed to end their ongoing patent dispute, dismissing all pending lawsuits against each other. The two rival companies said Wednesday that they had agreed to dismiss about 20 lawsuits brought against each during the past five years over royalties for patents related to smartphones, [...]
Published: 9/30/15Publication: GeekWireAfter years of wrangling over Google’s Chrome and Android technologies, Microsoft and the search giant announced a wide-ranging legal settlement this afternoon. Here’s a joint statement that the two companies released today: “Microsoft and Google are pleased to announce an agreement on patent issues. As part of the [...]
Published: 9/17/15Publication: FOSS PatentsAt a hearing in March, Apple faced a skeptical court for its fourth or so attempt to obtain a U.S. patent injunction against Samsung. Today, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued a ruling that vacates Judge Koh's August 2014 denial of an [...]
Published: 8/28/15Publication: National Law ReviewThe long-awaited ruling regarding the circumstances under which the owner of a standard-essential patent (SEP) encumbered by fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms may seek injunctive relief has been delivered by the Court of Justice of the European Union, in Huawei v. ZTE, Case No. 170/130 [...]
Published: 8/20/15These guidelines provide an analytical framework for the most common types of horizontal agreements, including standard-setting. The guidelines state that standardization “normally increase[s] competition and lower[s] output and sales costs, benefiting economies as a whole.” (Par. 263). However, standards also have the potential to restrict competition. “While a standard [...]
Published: 7/31/15Publication: Essential Patent BlogYesterday, the Ninth Circuit court of appeals issued a decision affirming Judge Robart’s RAND decision in the much watched Microsoft v. Motorola case, basically ruling that the determination of a reasonable and non-discriminatory (RAND) royalty rate and Motorola’s breach of its RAND commitments were reasonable based [...]
Published: 7/30/15Publication: Bloomberg BusinessMicrosoft Corp. won an appeals court ruling that may lower the rates many electronics makers pay to license technology considered standard in smartphones and computers. An appeals court in San Francisco Thursday upheld a $14.5 million jury verdict against Google Inc. as punishment for unfairly demanding what [...]
Published: 7/30/15This decision established FRAND royalty rates for the use of Motorola’s FRAND-encumbered SEPs that were essential to the H.264 video compression standard and the 802.11 (Wi-Fi) wireless local area networking standard. The court applied a modified version of the Georgia-Pacific methodology for establishing royalties in patent cases, which is [...]
Published: 7/16/15Publication: Out-Law.comThe Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has ruled that the owner of a standard-essential patent (SEP) could be abusing its dominant position by bringing a prohibitory injunction against an infringer of that patent if it has not first written to the infringer laying out terms [...]