Samsung Drops Injunction Requests Against Apple in Europe

[MacRumors]

In yet another development in the worldwide patent battle between Apple and Samsung, The Verge reports that Samsung has dropped its requests for injunctions barring the sale of a number of Apple products in Europe. Samsung has accused Apple of infringing several standards-essential patents related to cellular technology and has been pursuing both sales bans and monetary damages. Samsung's statement reads:

Samsung remains committed to licensing our technologies on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms, and we strongly believe it is better when companies compete fairly in the marketplace, rather than in court. In this spirit, Samsung has decided to withdraw our injunction requests against Apple on the basis of our standard essential patents pending in European courts, in the interest of protecting consumer choice.

While Samsung is portraying its move as an altruistic one focused on "protecting consumer choice", the company has been under scrutiny from the European Commission over potential antitrust issues related to licensing the standards-essential patents it owns.

Standards-essential patents are required to be licensed under FRAND (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory) terms in order to promote competition. The requirement is aimed at preventing a single company from controlling an entire industry by refusing to license patents critical to building a competing product. Apple's lawyers have argued, however, that Samsung's offers for licensing its 3G-related patents have not been reasonable.

Apple has been pushing for greater clarification of how patents subject to FRAND terms should be licensed, and has been one of a number of parties to argue that standards-essential patents should not be used as the basis for requests for sales injunctions as the patents are intended to be licensed.

Article Link: Samsung Drops Injunction Requests Against Apple in Europe

[KdParker]

Not sure if this really means anything. Maybe they are playing nice with each other

[Digital Skunk]

Funny, Macrumors spins this story against Samsung, other tech sites spin this story against Apple.

Who to trust?

I just want the companies to get back to producing kick *** phones and devices.

[bbeagle]

Originally Posted by Digital Skunk

Funny, Macrumors spins this story against Samsung, other tech sites spin this story against Apple.

Who to trust?

Funny, everywhere I've read is spinning this story against Samsung for making such a ridiculous statement - 'in the interest of protecting consumer choice'.

Give me some places that are spinning this against Apple.

[thekris1234]

I agree with what was said in the comments on another site. I think Samsung have pulled out because of the threat from the EU to investigate abuse of SEP's.

I believe Motorola is already being investigated.

[Tech198]

Originally Posted by bbeagle

Funny, everywhere I've read is spinning this story against Samsung for making such a ridiculous statement - 'in the interest of protecting consumer choice'.

Give me some places that are spinning this against Apple.

Lol.. Yep.... But sees it all about "competing faily". .. How the hell did Samung take soo long?

another bird has died off before Samsung relied "in spirit"

Personally, this is where you Really wanna have a "we agree not to sue u" type aggreement.

[Thunderhawks]

Anything lawsuit Samsung Apple page 2 please?

[camnchar]

Samsung stops wasting time and money and saves itself the embarrassment of losing in court. End of story.

[nepalisherpa]

Apple/Samsung, stop bothering each other and start innovating! I don't want to see a slightly updated 5S or S4.

[JAT]

Originally Posted by Digital Skunk

I just want the companies to get back to producing kick *** phones and devices.

Not pleased with the Note 2, GS III, or iPhone 5? If not, you may want to look at your standards.
Admittedly, the iPad 4 and latest Galaxy Tabs aren't exactly doing anything special, just speed upgrades.

[oliversl]

Is not funny, its a fact:

- Samsung oem some 3G patents that Broadcom licensed, Apple uses the licensed Broadcom chips and now Samsung says that from all companies that uses the Broadcom chips, Apple should pay more and the other companies not.
- Apple innovate in physical design and GUI, Samsung blatantly copied both, and Samsung says it should be allowed to copy and don't pay.

Originally Posted by Digital Skunk

Funny, Macrumors spins this story against Samsung, other tech sites spin this story against Apple.

Who to trust?

I just want the companies to get back to producing kick *** phones and devices.

[dennno]

Who's complaining? Let's all be selfish, the end of all these court battles is better for us consumers.

[Digital Skunk]

Originally Posted by JAT

Not pleased with the Note 2, GS III, or iPhone 5? If not, you may want to look at your standards.
Admittedly, the iPad 4 and latest Galaxy Tabs aren't exactly doing anything special, just speed upgrades.

I am satisfied with the Note II more so than any other device I've used in the past 5 years. It really brings me back to my Palm TX days. I use it more than my iPad.

I agree however, that most of the slates being introduced aren't more than incremental updates save for the iPad Mini which really only keeps me interested because of it's size.

Originally Posted by oliversl

Is not funny, its a fact:

- Samsung oem some 3G patents that Broadcom licensed, Apple uses the licensed Broadcom chips and now Samsung says that from all companies that uses the Broadcom chips, Apple should pay more and the other companies not.
- Apple innovate in physical design and GUI, Samsung blatantly copied both, and Samsung says it should be allowed to copy and don't pay.

And Apple ripped off many a tech company in its day and vice versa and we've never seen such nonsense in the courts. Or at least it was kept quite.

[MonkeySee....]

Samsung remains committed to licensing our technologies on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms, and we strongly believe it is better when companies compete fairly in the marketplace, rather than in court. In this spirit, Samsung has decided to withdraw our injunction requests against Apple on the basis of our standard essential patents pending in European courts, in the interest of protecting consumer choice.

This is a load of bollocks.

[D.T.]

Next week: Apple and Samsung take long hot shower together.

[Fanboy4ever]

Originally Posted by D.T.

Next week: Apple and Samsung take long hot shower together.

Next week we will all be GONE! ... end of the World coming this week ... or, haven't you heard yet ....

[iMikeT]

This type of news again?

[Fanboy4ever]

Originally Posted by dennno

Who's complaining? Let's all be selfish, the end of all these court battles is better for us consumers.

Not for lawyers ... think how much money these bas&^%@ have been making riding this wave ....

[LagunaSol]

While Samsung is portraying its move as an altruistic one focused on "protecting consumer choice"

Looks like Samsung is taking a play from Google's propaganda playbook.

[ryanasimov]

A show of hands, please... Who would prefer that all future stories about Apple/Samsung legal wranglings be relegated to Page 2?

[D.T.]

Originally Posted by Fanboy4ever

Next week we will all be GONE! ... end of the World coming this week ... or, haven't you heard yet ....

I totally forgot! I probably need to mail these Christmas cards _today_.

----------

Originally Posted by ryanasimov

A show of hands, please... Who would prefer that all future stories about Apple/Samsung legal wranglings be relegated to Page 2?

Yeah, I sometimes wish there was additional sub-categories to the main news section, like: new products, legal, competitive analysis/financial, etc (in addition to the sort of platform specific sections).

[TheRainKing]

It's all a bit boring now.

[kas23]

Phew! Thank God I got my Apple vs Samsung update today. I feel much relieved now.

[AirThis]

Samsung = bad, bad, Puddy Tat. Apple = Angelic Tweety...

Or at least that's how some of these PR spins read. I wish these two companies would just sit down and sort out their differences. I appreciate the quality of Samsung equipment.

[iBug2]

Originally Posted by Digital Skunk

And Apple ripped off many a tech company in its day and vice versa and we've never seen such nonsense in the courts. Or at least it was kept quite.

There were many court stories about others suing apple back in the day as well, but we weren't reading them online every day. Nothing really changed.