Ericsson Seeks US Import Ban On Samsung Products 102
angry tapir writes "Just a few days after Ericsson filed several patent-infringement lawsuits against Samsung in the U.S., the Swedish mobile phone company also filed a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC), asking for an import ban of a wide range of Samsung products, including the Galaxy S III and the Galaxy Note. Ericsson alleges that Samsung violates Section 337 of the Tariff Act by importing patent-infringing products into the U.S and selling them."
Re:Samsung may be devious.... (Score:5, Informative)
What comments like yours fail to consider is that Ericsson doesn't even have a horse in the handset race any more, which is a very important fact. They sold off their share of the Sony-Ericsson joint venture to Sony about a year ago (though the deal closed early this year) and have been doing just fine ever since, posting billions in profit with their bread-and-butter telecommunications equipment. They're out of the handset market and onto other things that are more focused on engineering and business-facing products than design and consumer-facing products.
As a result, they have nothing to gain by seeing Samsung fail, and they're doing just fine on their own, so this isn't a company who got beat turning patent troll. This is a case of a company outside the handset market who has legitimate patents based on actual engineering innovations having their patents used without proper licensing. There's nothing wrong in demanding that the company using your patents pay the licensing fees that are due, and why people ascribe them ulterior motives when they have nothing to gain is beyond me.
Every dominant company is not like 90's microsoft (Score:3, Informative)
Samsung is kind of hard to compete with nowadays, they're like the Microsoft of the 90s
Samsung is nothing like Microsoft...In fact Microsoft is still Microsoft only in the phone world its FUD; Bully Tactics; Burning Partners have got it treated like a clown that gives you cancer by both carriers and customers
The sad thing in this market anyway they are closet to...what Nokia was and could have been, several fledging operating systems including the successer to Meego [Tizen]; its own [Bada] and even Windows...its just the Market wants Android.
If I was arguing beyond Phones I may even say Sony...but Microsoft never.
Re:It is not beyond me. (Score:2, Informative)
Ericsson is part of an alliance with Microsoft, Apple, and others who see Linux and Android as a threat to their business model.
http://www.microsoft.com/enterprise/partners/ericsson.aspx#fbid=LZQES70oV98
http://www.engadget.com/2011/07/01/rim-apple-sony-microsoft-consortium-snags-nortel-wireless-pat/
The whole point to to keep the litigation going as long as possible.
I find this to be highly unlikely since the majority of Ericsson products are using Linux as a platform today
Key part from TFA (what it's really about). (Score:5, Informative)
Ericsson no longer makes phones. They're a highly profitable company building cell phone networks with lots of patents in the wireless tech-sphere. Samsung and Ericsson are not, in other words, direct competitors and this is not a case of competing through the courts. Key part from TFA:
"The suits were filed because Ericsson said it could not reach a license agreement for its patents with Samsung on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms after two years of negotiations. Samsung was asked to pay the same rate as its competitors, but Samsung refused, according to Ericsson.
"Samsung had licensed Ericsson patents before. However, according to a statement released by Samsung last week, Ericsson demanded 'significantly higher royalty rates for the same patent portfolio,' adding that it planned to 'take all necessary legal measures to protect against Ericsson's excessive claims.'"
This is purely about the money. The two companies stopped negotiating, Samsung is betting that going to court (they must have known a lawsuit was coming) will end up better for them than paying Ericsson's fee.
Re:Samsung may be devious.... (Score:5, Informative)
From TFA:
The suits were filed because Ericsson said it could not reach a license agreement for its patents with Samsung on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms after two years of negotiations. Samsung was asked to pay the same rate as its competitors, but Samsung refused, according to Ericsson.
Samsung had licensed Ericsson patents before. However, according to a statement released by Samsung last week, Ericsson demanded "significantly higher royalty rates for the same patent portfolio," adding that it planned to "take all necessary legal measures to protect against Ericsson's excessive claims."
Samsung used to license these patents, then stopped paying. They knew a lawsuit was coming, and decided it was a fight worth taking. I have no clue whether the fees requested by Ericsson are unreasonable or not - but there's no need for conspiracy theories or ulterior motives on this one.
Re:It is not beyond me. (Score:5, Informative)
Your links don't prove your point at all. In fact, if anything, they contradict it.
The first link you provided only tells us that they have a partnership with Microsoft to produce back-end solutions for telecommunications companies that need to manage billing for their customers. That has nothing to do with Android or Samsung and everything to do with them being in a business other than the handset business. And the second link you provided predates their leaving the handset market by several months. Since that time, they've divested themselves of the business they had that competed against Android, meaning that Android no longer poses any threat to them. In fact, greater Android adoption would be beneficial to them, since greater smartphone adoption would help drive demand for expanding telecommunications networks, which is exactly the business they're in.
In fact, just to highlight how silly this line of argumentation you have is, I'll point out that the NovaThor [wikipedia.org] platform Ericsson produces is only being adopted by Android phones so far, and you'll never guess which NovaThor-using company Ericsson cited in some of their most recent financial reports [hugin.info] (right on page 1) as an encouragement that gave them a better outlook for the coming months: Samsung.