Post 12: Apple vs. Samsung: International Patent War

I have read the news from fosspatents blog titled “German court keeps Samsung’s hopes alive by scheduling retrial in 3G patent case against Apple. The blog talked about German Judge ordered a retrial for Samsung vs. Apple case in 3G standard-essential patent (SEP). In the blog, the author stated that on a worldwide basis, Samsung had been unsuccessful with no less than 25 SEP assertions; meanwhile, Apple hadn’t been more successful with its own German patent assertions against Samsung.

Apple-Samsung’s International patent lawsuit started on April 21, 2011. Samsung submitted 10 infringement proceedings initiated for Apple in three countries’ court, about the 3G transport optimization of low power data transmission technology. Samsung filed five infringement litigation in Korea Court, two in Japan, and three in German. Apple and Samsung’s lawsuit advances was summarized as follows:

According to the market investing, Samsung is one of the Apple’s biggest competitors in both mobile phone and tablet market. Apple intends to warn Samsung through lawsuit. We have noticed that Apple purchased lots of its key parts from Samsung. According to Samsung’s data, in 2010, Apple’s total procurement from Samsung reached $5.7 billion. It seems like Apple became the largest buyer of Samsung; in another word, Samsung relied a lot on Apple. Apple may have realized this problem later on, so it seeks new company to produce A5 processor (the heart of iPhone and iPad).  I think Apple is trying to circumvent “eggs in one basket” risk through this way.

While Apple is changing its operation and production strategies, Samsung adopts to take a parallel International litigation strategy to fight back. I think Samsung have realized they had to face Apple someday when they chose Google’s Android as their phone and tablet operating system. Thus, Samsung fought quickly after receiving Apple’s first lawsuit. I think Samsung would like to develop its own brand rather than being part of Apple’s supporters. Suing in different countries stands for Samsung’s determination. We know that both visible and invisible costs spend on the litigation is very high, run more national court means adding more costs, which also proves Samsung’s resolution.  Now Apple is trying to break away from Samsung slowly, so most of Apple’s litigation are intended to warn Samsung, and it has not reached the stage of breaking up over. However, who is the big loser of this war? As audience, we can see as time goes. We can also learn how different countries treat patent differently. I’m looking forward to see if German’s court results were different than UK’s.