So what are these two spoiled kids up to? Well Samsung is going after Apple for another handful of patents. According to FOSS patents this is in response to a suit that Apple brought against Samsung back in February. The response suit alleges that Apple is in violation of eight of Samsung’s patents 2 of which should be covered under FRAND licensing (Fair, Reasonable, and Non-Discriminatory) and they have been declared is essential . These last two could hurt Samsung, but we have to wonder here about something here. If you look at the many, many patent lawsuits that are currently open against Apple you might notice that there are a lot of complaints that Apple is not even paying FRAND rates for the use of essentials declared technology. In Germany Motorola Mobility filed a complaint stating that Apple refused to enter into a FRAND agreement with them and continued to use the patent after repeated requests for them to properly license it. HTC made a similar attempt after buying the patent portfolio from S3 (another company that had a long standing complaint against Apple). Even Apple’s attempt to prevent the sale of Kodak’s patent portfolio seems to indicate that Apple might know they are violating others’ patents.

Now we have Samsung looking to do the same thing with two of their essentials patents. It will probably not work for them as too many judges are willing to throw out patent violations claims when they are essentials. It would be nice to see a judge look at the bigger picture and see if there is merit in the claims that Apple abuses the essentials standard to use others patents without compensation while trying to patent items so broadly that they can still go after the competition if it heats up.

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