NEWS
Apple and HTC sign patent truce litigation and signed a 10-year licensing
Apple and HTC have ended nearly three years of patent
deal in a move that raises questions about Apple’s changing approach to enforcing its patents.
Te smartphone rivals revealed the news in a joint statement on November 10, saying they have reached a “global” settlement that includes the dismissal of all current lawsuits. Te licence extends to current and future patents owned by the parties, the statement said.
Although details of the agreement are confidential, Te Guardian newspaper, citing industry sources, said HTC may have agreed to pay Apple between $5 and $20 per handset it produces using Google’s Android operating system. However, on 21 November, the US District Court for the Northern District of California granted Samsung's motion to see details of the settlement.
Apple and HTC, a Taiwanese smartphone-maker, had been suing each other for 32 months in the US and Europe. One battleground was the International Trade Commission (ITC), a quasi-judicial federal agency that can block imports at US borders. Te ITC was due to make a preliminary ruling on an Apple complaint against HTC in late November.
Paul Sutton, partner at Sutton Magidoff in New York, said the settlement may be viewed as the “beginning of the end of many of the dozens of patent litigations around the world”. He said Apple’s new management, since the death of co-founder Steve Jobs in October 2011, appears to be adopting a more practical approach to litigation, trying not to waste resources in cases “in which the only sure winners will be the attorneys”.
On the TechCrunch website, US IP lawyer Ansel Halliburton said the deal may actually show that Apple is “going for the jugular of one of Google’s weakened proxies”.
According to Florian Müller, the author of the FossPatents blog and a close observer of smartphone litigation, the timing of the deal was surprising, given that neither party had “massive” leverage over the other in their court battles. However, he said, the ITC hearing in November could have changed this.
He said the deal represented the 15th patent licensing agreement (public) with Android phones. Microsoſt is a party in many of these deals.
Gripe site defeats Wal-Mart in UDRP dispute
Wal-Mart has failed to remove a website used to criticise the company in a dispute highlighting the divide between US and non-US views on free speech.
Te US retailer tried to transfer three domains with the term ‘walmartat50’, all of which directed to the same site, by using the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP). Te system resolves disputes between trademark owners and domain registrants.
Wal-Mart had launched
walmart50.com in July 2011 to celebrate 50 years in business. Te respondent in the case, UFCW International Union, registered the three domains in March 2012. Te bottom of the site, which included one quote saying the company “trampled” on its workers’ human rights, referenced groups called OURWalmart and Making Change at Walmart, both unaffiliated with the brand.
In the decision on September 19, panellist Michael Albert at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) said the domains were confusingly similar to Wal-Mart’s mark and were not used in a non-commercial manner—a defence under the UDRP. Tis was partly because there was no disclaimer that it was a ‘complaint’ site.
www.worldipreview.com
But analysing the case further, the panellist allowed UFCW to retain the site.
Albert
said despite allegations that UFCW used the domains commercially—activities that could highlight bad faith use—Wal-Mart did not submit any evidence to support these claims. He added it was “significant” that the respondent was not in competition with Wal-Mart.
Te case reemphasises that US laws tend to place more protection on free speech than those of other countries. It is well known that in cases involving two US parties and a disputed ‘gripe’ site, panellists typically find in favour of latter, if it is cleared of cybersquatting.
the
“Tis shows that in cases involving US parties, whose conduct must generally comport with US law,
legitimate gripe sites cannot be challenged
through the UDRP,” said David Bernstein, partner at Debevoise & Plimpton in New York. “Such sites are an exercise of free speech that has long been recognised and upheld by US courts.
“UK and US panellists have very different views on this, and if the gripe site involves all UK or European parties then a UDRP panel would more likely transfer it, if the domain name
contains the trademark without making clear that it is a criticism site.”
Matthew Harris, partner at Waterfront Solicitors in London, said it made “no sense to have different approaches affected by local laws” and it was “deeply undesirable for a UDRP outcome to depend on geography”.
“While WIPO is aware of the divide, encourages consistency and has tried to bridge the gap at its panellist meetings in the past, there is no binding policy,” he said.
Wal-Mart and the UFCW have clashed in a UDRP case before. In July 2011 Wal-Mart successfully transferred ‘
ourwalmart.org’, which the panel said had been used for commercial gain.
Trademarks Brands and the Internet Volume 1, Issue 4 7
But he said this was, perhaps, “the beginning of the endgame” of Apple’s “war” against Android, with Samsung being Apple’s major target. “Te HTC deal is bad news for Samsung, and even worse news for Google. Whatever royalty HTC agreed to, it sets a floor for any future deal between Apple and Samsung,” he wrote.
On December 6, a court in California will hear post- trial motions from the trial in August in which a jury fined Samsung $1 billion for infringing several of Apple’s patents.
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