IERI (Yesterday) I told you that Samsung dropped the lawsuit against the iPhone 4S in Germany admitting that the technology he believed to be infringed is in fact licensed by Apple from Qualcomm. Also yesterday, Samsung hired two new law firms and Apple acted in court for the infringement of 4 new invention patents. Two of these patents are FRAND and two are not, and one of them is related to the way iDevices display smileys on the screen. Apple already had 6 lawsuits against Samsung in Germany, now we are adding this one and probably others that will follow, but I don't think that any member of the management of the two companies is smiling now.
Here are the 4 patents apparently infringed by Apple:
- European Patent 1679803: "Method for configuring gain factors for uplink service in radio telecommunication system"
- European Patent 1720373 (B1): "Method and apparatus for reporting inter-frequency measurement using RACH message in a communication system"
- German Patent 10040386: "Speech output device for data displayed on mobile telephone converts data from display into speech data for output via loudspeaker"
- European Patent 1215867: "Emoticon input method for mobile terminal"
Now with the help of two new law firms Samsung is much more confident in its chances of success, it remains to be seen how Apple will respond to this new process. I said it since April and I repeat it now: Apple and Samsung will fight in the courts for several years, but the ones who have the most to lose are the customers, that is us.
