Samsung’s set of commitments have come to light, which the EU Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia had revealed last month. Samsung is willing to drop all the litigations related to mobile-related standard essential patents (SEPs) in the EU and abstain from any future litigations if the other party is willing to license a particular framework.
The other party currently is Apple and if they license the patents, Samsung will not seek any SEP-related injunction against them in the European region for a period of five years. Samsung proposed this commitment to avoid the antitrust fine that could’ve cost Samsung $18.3 billion or about 10 percent of 2012 annual revenue.
To address these concerns, Samsung has proposed to commit for a period of five years not to seek any injunctions on the basis of any of its SEPs, present and future, that relate to technologies implemented in smartphones and tablets (“Mobile SEPs”) against any company that agrees to a particular licensing framework.
The licensing framework consists of: (i) a negotiation period of up to 12 months and (ii) if no agreement is reached, a third party determination of FRAND terms by either a court or an arbitrator, as agreed by the parties. If the parties cannot agree on either submitting to court or arbitration, the parties will have to submit to arbitration.
This is actually a Win for Samsung and Apple has only ended up calling the Cops on themselves. So to make this simple to understand. The EU is basically saying that although Samsung is wrong to sue Apple for not paying license fees to Samsung, Apple is also wrong for not paying all these accumulated licensing in the first place.
Being forced into arbitration was definitely not what Apple was seeking. They instead wanted to walk away scot free without paying anything by running to the EU blabbering on about Samsung being a big bully and demanding in court that they pay up in accordance with this Private Industry Standards organization!
Guess what? Arbitration becomes a binding agreement in seeking justice for both parties. Only Apple will most likely not like the results. Even though both parties have the right to choose who that arbitrator ends up being and both share equally in the cost. In affect this means the EU would be in agreement with Samsung about Apple attempting to avoid at all costs paying Samsung their due.
Obviously not something Apple wanted to hear out of the EU court they sicked on Samsung in the first place!!! lol…. Smooth Move Apple Ex-Lax fed attorneys…. looks like Apple will end up paying at least something in the end no matter what. Not only here, but this puts other members of these standards governing bodies on notice that their Great Escape Act and pointing the finger at the those owners of SEPS in the first place, just flew right back in their FACES!!!