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SWEDISH TELECOMMUNICATIONS EQUIPMENT maker Ericsson has said that it is suing South Korean rival Samsung in a US court for violating patents.
“Ericsson has today filed a lawsuit in the United States against Samsung for infringing its patents, after nearly two years of negotiations failed to reach an agreement,” a statement said.
“The dispute concerns both Ericsson’s patented technology that is essential to several telecommunications and networking standards used by Samsung’s products as well as other of Ericsson’s patented inventions that are frequently implemented in wireless and consumer electronics products,” it added.
Samsung has also gone to court in Britain, Japan, the Netherlands and the United States amid disputes with the US computer giant Apple over technology used in mobile phones and tablet computers.
Samsung’s positions have been backed up by courts in most of those cases.
With the use of smartphones in particular surging worldwide, courts are frequently being asked to rule to settle skirmishes in a long-running global patent war between the high-tech giants which have accused each other of stealing intellectual property.
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Walls need to be broken down to end all these disputes both now and in the future. Far too often is this happening now. It’s like the copyright laws that prevent certain programmes being shown on certain websites or regions. The laws that deal with these issues these days are obsolete and are becoming more and more difficult to implement. A new structure of freedom and sharing is needed if we are to move forward.
Computer Says No
Eric who now?
Eh, while you might not be aware of Ericsson as they exited the handset market, they are absolutely enormous in network infrastructure technology.
A huge number mobile phone networks and a very large percentage of landline networks depend on Ericsson gear. In Ireland, your phone calls have been going through Ericsson exchanges since the 1950s!
In terms of real R&D Ericsson is one of the companies that had genuinely been instrumental in really fundamental telecommunications tech development. They also tend to license most if their technology.
I don’t think this is like the Apple cases where someone is patenting round corners…
Nokia, Alcatel-Lucent and Motorola and a few others are also in that genuinely serious R&D space too.
have your say