EPLAW Patent Blog

UK - HTC v. Apple (Appeal)

HTC Europe Co. Ltd. V. Apple Inc. and Apple Inc. v. HTC Corporation, Court of Appeal, London, UK, 3 May 2013, [2013] EWCA Civ 451

The Court of Appeal allowed in part Apple’s appeal of the decision of the Patents Court that one of its patents was invalid.

The original trial before Mr Justice Floyd concerned four actions between HTC and Apple regarding four patents owned by Apple. Following the judgment, HTC and Apple settled their dispute and so HTC did not take part in the appeal.

The appeal only concerned the validity of two of the Apple patents, EP (UK) 2 098 948 (“the ‘948 Patent) and EP (UK) 1 964 022 (“the ‘022 Patent”). The ‘948 Patent relates to computer devices with touch sensitive screens which are capable of responding to more than one touch at a time and the ‘022 Patent relates to ways unlocking computer devices with touch sensitive screens. The issues before the Court of Appeal were as follows:

UK - Samsung v Apple / Samsung UMTS patents held invalid

In the latest of the Samsung v Apple battles in the ongoing war between the two technology giants, the UK High Court has revoked three of Samsung’s UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) patents.

The first judgment dealt with EP 726 and 675, the first relating to turbo codes and the second to channel coding and multiplexing. Both patents were held to not be entitled to their priority and accordingly invalid due to the intervening prior art. Had they been entitled to their priority, both patents would nevertheless have been invalid for obviousness.

The decision sets out a good summary of the UK courts’ approach to priority (see paras 104-136).  It also sets out some interesting comments on the requirement in the UK for patentees to identify claims contended to be independently valid (see paras 60-64).  For those wishing to learn more about UMTS in general, it contains an excellent technical primer to the subject matter of the patents in suit.

The second judgment on EP 404 dealt only with the third patent. It was also held to not be entitled to its priority and accordingly invalid due to the intervening prior art.  It was also held to be obvious based on both the UK courts’ standard approach to obviousness and also based on what Floyd J called the Agrevo basis, after a TBA decision of the same name relating to herbicides.  Agrevo says that a claim to a broad class of chemicals would be rejected for being obvious where the invention (if any) would lie in the discovery that some of that class were herbicides.

Read the decision on EP 404 (in English) here.

Read the decision on EP 726 and 675 (in English) here.

Headnote: William Jensen and Graham Burnett-Hall

NL - Apple v. Samsung

Apple Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co. Limited c.s., District Court The Hague, The Netherlands, 28 November 2012, Case/Docket No. 413294 / HA ZA 12-220

Proceedings on the merits with respect to Apple’s photo gallery “bounce-back” patent, EP 2 059 868. On 24 August 2011, the PI judge had provisionally held that Samsung’s Android 2.2.1 Galaxy products infringed upon that patent, but that this was not the case for the Galaxy products running Android 3.0 and higher. This in confirmed in the proceedings on the merits.

According to the Court, in the Android 3.0 products there is no “second movement” needed for skipping to the next photograph, but rather a movement which is longer than a certain threshold value. As a skilled man would interpret the features “first-” and “second” movement as alternating movements which thus follow one another in time, the Court held that the Galaxy 3.0 products did not meet this feature. This was held to be different for the Android 2.2.1 products, in which the skipping to a next photograph according to the Court would be co-dependent on the detection of a “second movement”, which, as allegedly confirmed by the description, would be covered by the claims. Not in dispute was that products that used the “blue flash” update  which Samsung had introduced after the PI decision had been rendered, did not infringe.

The Patent was moreover held to be valid.

NL - Samsung v. Apple / FRAND

Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd v. Apple Inc. et al, joined cases, District Court The Hague, The Netherlands, 14 March 2012, Case numbers 400367 / HA ZA 11-2212, 400376 / HA ZA 11-2213 and 400385 / HA ZA 11-2215

Samsung recently accused Apple of patent infringement. The four patents that were invoked by Samsung in the four  proceedings before the District Court of The Hague relate to the 3G technology. Before discussing the infringement and validity of each of these patents, the Court ordered a hearing applicable to all four cases regarding Apple’s FRAND defense and its other preliminary defenses.

In this interlocutory judgment, the Court denies the injunction requested by Samsung.

The general FRAND statement made by Samsung in combination with the applying of the standard by Apple does (unlike Apple's arguments that it would) not mount to a contract. According to the Court Samsung does not have to assume in general that each user wants a FRAND license and not every user may assume that they by using the standard are contractually bound with Samsung. This is the more so since a discussion on what conditions are FRAND is possible.

The Court held that in view of the negotiations on the terms of a FRAND license between the parties, the request for an injunction by Samsung in light of the circumstances should be seen as an abuse of authority and/or contrary to the pre contractual obligation to negotiate in good faith. The Court held that it could not be maintained that Apple was not negotiating in good faith.

This, since the counter offer made by Apple and the way it was calculated was not unreasonable (though the Court explicitly did not state whether it was FRAND). The counter offer by Apple was calculated based on a cumulative royalty ceiling of an x (confidential) percentage, a proportional division of that ceiling over all 1889 declared essential patent families in the standard, a royalty base of 20% of the sales price of its end products and moreover was only limited to the Dutch parts of the four patents invoked by Samsung.