Week I told you that Samsung is ready to sue Apple in the event that iPhone 5 it will be compatible with 4G LTE networks. Those from Samsung predict that iPhone 5 would violate certain of his patents and they have already prepared an attack strategy against Apple. Last year, Samsung acted the same way, it sued Apple after the launch of the iPhone 4S, accusing it of infringing some patents for telecommunications technologies, but in the end it turned out that Apple had bought baseband chips with everything licensed, so it had the right to use technologies.
LTE standard patents registered with the European Telecommunications Standards Institute show that Apple had no LTE patents last year but has now acquired 318 patents or 4.9 percent of total LTE patents to rank among the top 10 patent holders, the Korea Intellectual Property Office said Monday. Apple only developed 44 of its 318 LTE patents itself and bought the rest from Nortel and Freescale last year. Patent enforcement firm Rockstar Bidco, in which Apple holds a majority stake, owns another 116 LTE patents, giving Apple 434 in all.
Although last year Apple relied on partners to fight Samsung, this year the company has a portfolio very vast number of patents that he can use. At ETSI, a European organization that regulates telecommunications, Apple has registered 318 patents, which represent 4.9% of the total registered there. Of the 318 patents, only 44 were developed by Apple, the rest being bought from Nortel and Freescale. To them is added another 116 held by a company in which Apple is the majority shareholder, so in total the company has at its disposal 434 invention patents related to 4G LTE telecommunications technologies.
Samsung has 819 patents for these technologies, almost 2 times more than Apple, but in the current situation a legal battle seems useless.
