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.