Samsung Offers Patent Cease-Fire in EU

dryriver sends this quote from the BBC: "Samsung has said that it will stop taking rivals to court [in the E.U.] over certain patent infringements for the next five years. The white flag in the patent battle has been raised because the South Korean electronics firm faces a huge fine for alleged abuses of the system. The move could help end a long-running patent war between the world's largest mobile makers. The E.U. said that a resolution would bring 'clarity to the industry'. 'Samsung has offered to abstain from seeking injunctions for mobile SEPs (standard essential patents) for a period of five years against any company that agrees to a particular licensing framework,' the European Commission said in a statement. Standard essential patents refer to inventions recognised as being critical to implementing an industry standard technology. Examples of such technologies include the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS), a cellular standard at the heart of 3G data; and H.264, a video compression format used by YouTube, Blu-ray disks and Adobe Flash Player among others. The E.U. had accused the Samsung of stifling competition by bringing a series of SEP lawsuits against Apple and other rivals."

Re:What's the point of a patent then?

[Anonymous Coward]

What I'm wondering, is if the patents are so essential to an industry, why doesn't the government just come in and say "Hey Samsung, we're taking your patent. You are free to continue to use it without paying us any licensing fees, but we will also license it out to who ever we choose"? What is the benefit of letting Samsung keep the patent vs the method I just described?

Re:What's the point of a patent then?

[NicBenjamin]

You've actually just made the case against Samsung.

Samsung did some really good technical work, which almost everyone wanted to copy, so they agreed that the patents involved were "Standards Essential Patents" which would be licensed to everyone cheap. Changing their minds and saying "OK, everybody bat Apple can use those patents," was simply something they agreed they weren't allowed to do when they agreed to have the patents declared standards. Basically they were trying to force their #1 competitor out of their #1 market, and the legal system is not supposed to tolerate that shit. Just look at Apple and it's conviction for eBook price-fixing.

OTOH Apple did a bunch of decent technical work, and some truly mind-blowing design work. Then they sued people on the basis of the design patents. Since they never agreed not to do that, and it was trivial for Samsung to design it's way around said patents once they realized that courts enforce design patents, Samsung got it's ass reamed in court and nobody is worried that Samsung will be forced out of the smartphone market.