Ericsson remained unfazed by the latest salvo fired by Samsung Electronics in the dispute between the two network manufacturers over patents, saying it was still confident it would win the legal battle.
Samsung countersued Ericsson, alleging patent infringement on 20 of its patents, including including those related to wireless standards and device functions. Ericsson had sued Samsung in November after the two companies reached an impasse over how much Samsung would pay Ericsson to license Ericsson's wireless standards patents
"Ericsson seeks to extract a usurious ransom that dwarfs the amounts paid by Samsung in two prior agreements (with Ericsson) as well as the payments made by any other Ericsson licensee," Samsung said in the court document.
Ericsson said it is "confident" that the court would resolve the claims in its favour, according to Reuters.
Patent revenue represents an important stream of income for mobile network manufacturers: Ericsson had patent revenues of €788 million in 2012, up from €741 million in 2011 and €550 million in 2010, according to Reuters.
In other European mobile patent news this week, Nokia won one of the 22 infringement suits it has bought against HTC in Germany after a German court ruled in favour of the Finnish mobile phone maker, saying some devices made by Taiwan's HTC infringed on its power-saving patent, according to Reuters. HTC has said the decision will not affect its German business since the judgment only covers three handsets that HTC no longer imports into Germany.
Finally, Chinese vendor Huawei has won a provisional injunction against sales of LTE base stations by competitor ZTE in Germany. According to IDG News Service, the District Court of Mannheim found that ZTE infringes on a Huawei patent called "key derivation," which describes a way to ensure smooth handover of a signal in an LTE system, reducing the call drop rate. ZTE has said it will appeal against the decision.
For more:
- see this Reuters article
- see this IDG News Service article
- see this Bloomberg article
- see this separate Reuters article
- see this Dow Jones Newswires article
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