Blog 14. Samsung-Apple Continues due to FRAND patent infringement

http://www.fosspatents.com/2013/03/itc-postpones-samsung-apple-ruling.html
http://www.fosspatents.com/2011/06/samsung-files-itc-complaint-against.html




The ITC has extended a final ruling on Samsung's complaint against Apple, asking for an import ban against the iPhone, iPad and iPod. The recent reports in this space has show that supplier-customer relationship is a lower priority than the intellectual property fight. The ITC commission focused on asserting several claims from US Patent No. 7706348 on an "apparatus and method for encoding/decoding transport format combination indicators in CDMA mobile communication systems," an allegedly UMTS-essential patent.

Most importantly, the late stage of this investigation will ultimately mean that Apple will infringe on at least one of the claims. That's why there are considerations regarding an important ban and a FRAND licensing issue.

I actually had no idea what FRAND was until I looked into this post. After doing some research, I discovered that FRAND is a legal term that stands for "Fair, Reasonable, and Non-Discriminatory." They apply to patent licensing terms. Many licensing agreements have to adhere to FRAND standards in order to be legal.

FRAND licensing is a core issue with pending litigations. Structure, sequence, and organization (SSO) can help deter the issues with FRAND licensing. SSO is a procedure to test of one software infringes on the copyrights or patent of another software. Ever since a 1986 case, Whelan v. Jaslow, methods of comparing SSO of different companies has evolved to avoid extreme over-protection and under-protection.

Most recently, SSO was redefined in a case between Google and Oracle. SSOs typically do not focus on the definitions of fair and reasonable. In fact, SSOs can be used to bring more meaningful FRAND rules. FRAND related cases can be dealt with by focusing on sound SSO. Very interest, I would not have known this without researching these definitions.