In the Eastern District of Texas, Samsung finally responded to Ericssons lawsuits against Samsung. Samsung made a bold claim that Ericsson became a patent troll in the mobile handset business once they decided to exit the market (when it sold its stake in Sony-Ericsson to Sony).
They claim that:
"[...] Ericsson has recently jettisoned its mobile phone business and it
now feels unhinged as a non-practicing entity in the mobile phone
market to extort vastly unreasonable and discriminatory license fees
from Samsung under threat of product exclusion resulting from a
simultaneously filed complaint in the U.S. International Trade
Commission ('ITC'). Ericsson's misguided actions epitomize the patent
'hold up'
problem that has been the recent subject of wide discussion within
standard-setting organizations and other authorities around the globe
[...]"
"Ericsson seeks to dismantle the standard-setting framework with
unreasonable and discriminatory license demands from a willing licensee
under threat of product exclusion."
This beckons the interesting question of whether or not we should consider companies who exited certain industries as non practicing entities.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2VkApqzkS4
Thanks for the read Aviv! I really liked your video as well. I think it is definitely interesting what Samsung claims Ericsson has done, and also like you said if we should consider companies who exited certain industries as non practicing entities. I will definitely look more closely at those two companies and that situation in the coming months.
ReplyDelete@ James, the fact that NPE is a terms that is being loosely thrown around to anyone that is currently not relevant in the marketplace is a bit of a stretch. Ericsson has been a major role player in this market for years, and to diminish them to a NPE now is simply absurd.
ReplyDeleteSurprised Ericsson has any patents to troll with; i thought they've been out of the mobile game for quite some time.
ReplyDelete