Ericsson sues Samsung for Violating Patents

 The world's biggest telecom network equipment maker, Ericsson, announced that it was suing Samsung in a US court for violating patents. The two companies were negotiating for 2 years and haven’t reached agreement between them.

"Ericsson has tried long and hard to amicably come to an agreement with Samsung and sign a license agreement on FRAND terms. We have turned to litigation as a last resort," Kasim Alfalahi, chief intellectual property officer at Ericsson said in a statement, Reuters reported. Ericsson is looking for sales ban of mobile devices in US, including the Galaxy S III and Galaxy Note II, and also cameras, TVs of Samsung.

▲ Video on mashable.com captured 

Mashable.com noted Ericsson’s two complaints. Ericsson argued that Samsung requested to renew licenses for Ericsson technologies at rates much lower than other companies pay, and also witheld access to its own patents as a retaliatory move to pressure Ericsson into accepting a lower price.

To watch video of this on marshable.com click here

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Weekly Korean IP Headlines 11.29. 2012

We will touch on the latest Korean IP news headlines from WIPS Global blog. Last week was Thanksgiving Holiday  (and officially started Holiday season).  Followed by Black Friday, last Monday was Cyber Monday.  It seems like many people shopped electronic products such as Samsung and Apple.  Unfortunately, there is no Black Friday or Cyber Monday deals in Korea.  Let’s just take a look at what else is going on in Korean IP industry.   

Asia Today reported on 22nd of November, KIPO and KIPA will host ‘2012 Trademark, Design Right Exhibition’ from November 29th to December 2nd at COEX, Seoul.  In this exhibition, KIPO will award ‘2012 Best Trademark Right Contents Exhibit.’  For the detailed information and the time line, click here.  The original news article is here.  Also click here for your future information, KIPO and KIPA websites.



KIPA © | The banner of Trademark and Design Right Exhibition
 

Asia Today reported on same day that the number of patent applications related to disaster prevention broadcasting system is keep increasing in Korea.  The broadcasting system helps to quickly react to disasters such as hurricanes, heavy snows, fire, and explosion accidents.  According to KIPO, the applied disaster prevention broadcasting system patent applications are 120 cases in last five years.  Find out the original article here.


 State Library and Archives of Florida © | Disastrous scene in FL

Hankook Ilbo reported on 25th, that Ulsan city Korea and the Korea Research Institute of Chemical
Technology’s ‘Fine Chemistry Technical Cooperative Project’ is well paying off. The project is obtaining excellent results in creation of jobs, investment, sales increase, and R&D.   It is expected to get the good share of profit follow by the full-scale market access according to the article.  Detailed information and the original articl is here.

KRICT © | UNIST, Ulsam City, KRICT signed MOU

Dong-A Ilbo English version reported on 28th, Korean entertainers are registering their names as trademarks for image protection and the launch of new ventures.  According to KIPO, trademark applications related to music albums and entertainment business surged in 2010.  Entertainment agencies are registering as trademarks not only music albums and entertainment businesses, but also cosmetics, clothing, stationery and food according to Dong-A ilbo.  Check out the detailed information here.

 YG Entertainment E-Shop © | Psy's Gangnam Style Character Goods

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Apple,LG Face Alcatel-Lucent's Video Compression Technology Patent Lawsuit

alcatel-lucent.com

Apple and LG are in trouble after Alcatel-Lucent’s patent lawsuit against both companies to video compression technology. According to the patent trust’s attorney, Frederick Lorig, they have given Apple and LG a chance to license their patents but both companies didn’t, while 33 other companies have licensed and paid about $190 million, Bloomberg wrote.  

“Apple and LG have chosen not to license these patents while 33 other companies have paid over $190 million for these licenses,” Frederick Lorig commented. “even though a company as prominent as Motorola is paying $18 million to license the patents. And Apple sells four times the number of infringing products that Motorola does.”

▲ LG Lotus Elite            ▲ LG Chocolate Touch

▲ MacBook

Products involved: LG’s older feature phones, including the Chocolate Touch, the Blizz, the Lotus Elite and a few others. It also involves Apple’s iPhone, MacBook, iPod and iPad, Bloomberg also noted. 

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Apple Buys Lightning Trademark From Harley-Davidson

▲ store.apple.com

Apple have now rights for using the name ‘Lightning' for its iPhone connector after buying the name from motorcycle maker Harley-Davidson. The registered trademark for "Lightning" was originally owned by H-D Michigan, Inc., which is the intellectual property holding company for Harley-Davidson, appleinsider told.

Appleinsider also added that the motorcycle maker owned the rights to the Lightning name in range of various product types: television sets, games, computer game programs, eye glasses, and eyeglass frames, in addition to motorcycle electrical parts, protective helmets and turn signals.

The Lightning connector was introduced when iPhone 5 has released.
It has sold with all of Apple’s devices including iPod touch, iPad mini and iPad. It’s much smaller than its previous model. 

To get more information about Apple's Lightening connector, click this link! 

▶Apple’s Lightning Connector: What We Know, What We Don’t

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Samsung wins to access details Apple-HTC patent deal

▲ Samsung and Apple mobile devices

Samsung has won an order to have access to the details of Apple and HTC’s 10-year licensing deal. U.S. Magistrate Judge ordered Apple to produce a copy of the agreement under an “attorneys- eyes-only” designation, meaning it won’t be publicly available, Bloomberg reported.

Apple and HTC signed a 10-year license agreement this month, but haven’t unveiled the details. Samsung, which is involved in many patent suits with Apple, requested to have those settlement details that could be helpful to their patent suits.

According to court documents, Apple had proposed in October 2010 that Samsung pay $30 per handset and $40 per tablet, with Apple willing to give Samsung a 20% discount if the Korean company agreed to cross-license its technology, Wall Street Journal reported.

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Samsung and LG OLED Patents Dipute

Korea's major electronic companies, Samsung and LG has involved in OLED patent law suit.

lgdisplay.com 

samsungdisplay.com 

Last July, LG Display workers had charged with stealing Samsung Mobile Display technology. And in September, Samsung has faced a patent infringement lawsuit against LG and Samsung responded back to its rival LG over next-generation display panels this Nov.

According to the Yonhap News Agency, Samsung has filed a lawsuit against LG Display, the world's No. 2 maker of liquid crystal displays, seeking the invalidation of some of the latter's patents on organic light-emitting diode (OLED) panel technologies, company officials said on Monday. 

Samsung argued that the technologies lacked the originality and innovation to warrant a patent. "These are typical legal steps to defend a company's stance in a patent infringement suit," the Samsung spokesman told AFP, reported on phys.org.

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WIPS, Attended 2012 KINPA Annual Conference

2012 KINPA Annual Conference was held at JW Marriott hotel on 14th.

It was hosted by KIPO (Korean Intellectual Property Office) and KINPA (Korea Intellectual Property Association). About 300 visitors from KINPA and IP industry took part in this conference.

This conference was about establishing IP strategy and improving specialty to strengthen competitiveness in the world. With the topic ‘Case analysis on Europe patent infringement ‘, the sessions were divided by patent and design-trademark.

Dr. Eugen Popp, director of Germany GRUR (German Association for the Protection of Intellectual Property), delivered the keynote speech ‘EU Unified Patent Court/Unitary Patent System Update’.

WIPS had booths at the hall for providing WIPS’ services and promoting it by demonstrating WINTELIPS. Lots of visitors asked about WIPS’ online services, we were very glad to meet all the visitors.  

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Apple Pays $21M for Using Patented Clock Design

photo source : wikipedia, apple.com

Apple, which is very strict with their designs, has paid Swiss railway company SBB $21 million for using clock design. In a report in AFP, SBB has taken offense to the Apple’s icon design that is a trademark owned by SBB.   

An SBB spokesman told that "We're rather proud that a brand as important as Apple is using our design". They were proud that Apple decided to use their clock design, but Apple was not licensed for it. Apple quickly request to have official talk with SBB, and the two company made an agreement of using clock design. 

The design is created by SBB employee Hans Hilfiker in 1944. It is also used in station clocks throughout the railway system, and licensed to Mondaine, a Swiss watch company. You can see this clock images here.  

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Weekly Korean IP Headlines 11.21. 2012

Korean ETnews reported relatively unfamiliar news for Westerners on November 12th.  Have you heard about volume-rate food waste disposal facilities? Some of Asian countries are practicing volume-rate food waste disposal system to prevent environmental pollution: "pay as you throw".  The system is very reasonable, but it causes problems because wastes are not traceable and hard to find who wasted more. 

To make more reasonable system, Korean Ministry of Environment advised RFID system waste food disposal facility technology to each of the local government in 2010.  According to ETnews, the breadth of market is more than 3 million dollars.  Recently, ICT patent litigation arose from this market by KT and LG UPLUS which are Korean major communication service corporations.  KT’s subcontractor Conpotech filed a lawsuit against LG UPLUS’s subcontractor Boomin W&P to Seoul Eastern District Court.  Conpotech claimed Boomin W&P about infringement on ‘automatic switchgear technology of food waste disposal utility.’ For more information and original article, click here.

©Conpotech | RFID location food waste disposal

Korean Etnews reported on 13th, KIPO (Korean Intellectual Property Office), KIPA (Korea Invention Promotion Association), and Knowledge Forum will host ‘International Symposium of Invention Related to the Duties’ at Korean Federation of Science and Technology Societies on November 26th.  According to KIPA, the symposium subject is ‘vitalization of small and medium businesses’ invention of related to the duties and invention system.’ The symposium also will provide discussion sessions and share information with experts from Korea, U, Germany, Japan and China.  For more information, visit KIPA web page or find out original article here.

©KIPA | KIPA logo

According to Hankyung news Korea, Samsung electronics’ R&D investment amount is more than 1 trillion dollars in a month.  On 15th, Hankyung reported that Samsung electronics is putting majority amount of money and labors to the R&D part despite the world economic recession. According to Samsung’s 3rd quarter report, the accumulated amount of R&D investment of Samsung already exceeded 8 billion dollars as of last September 2012.  The amount is corresponding with 6.1% of the total sales amount of Samsung electronics (around 145 trillion dollars).  It is predictable that the total amount of this year’s Samsung R&D amount would be more than 12 trillion dollars at this rate.  According to Hankyung, Samsung has 3 steps of R&D part in each operation divisions; from short term commercialization to the long term advanced developing by Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology.  The original article is here.

©Hankyung | Samsung Electronics' R&D investment amount gowth

PC Magazine reported on 19th, Samsung has sued LG Display relating to its OLED technologies.  According to the Yonhap News Agency Korea, Samsung filed with a South Korean Intellectual Property Tribunal, and claimed that seven of LG’s OLED patents “are invalid as they lack innovation.”  LG and Samsung both showed 55-inch OLED TV at CES this year, and expected to debut the devices in summer 2012.  However, the sets will be available only in small volumes by the end of 2012 according to NPD Display Search.  For more detailed information, click here.

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Apple vs. Samsung Patent Decision gets Review by ITC

(Reuters) - The U.S. International Trade Commission will review a judge's decision which found that Apple did not violate patents owned by Samsung Electronics in making the iPod touch, iPhone and iPad. Click to read more on reuters.com 

It seems that Samsung will get a chance to make reversal result of design infringe patent suit against Apple. As noted by Reuters, ITC announced that it will review the decision made by Administrative Law Judge James Gildea last September. This could overturn the last decision and it will be a huge chance for Samsung because the USITC’s decision could make Apple devices to be banned for sale in the United States.

“We remain confident that the commission will reach a final determination that affirms our position that Apple must be held accountable for free-riding on our technological innovations,” 

said Adam Yates, a spokesman for Samsung, according to Bloomberg.

Further reading -

▶ITC To Review Apple-Samsung CopyrightRuling

▶Samsung Gets Review of Loss to Apple inU.S. Patent Case

▶U.S. ITC will review Apple, Samsung patentdecision

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Starbucks sues Namyang for Infringing Trademark 'Double Shot'

Starbucks.com

company.namyangi.com

Starbucks, one of the biggest American coffee company, has filed a lawsuit against a Korean dairy products manufacture company, Namyang. Starbucks said that Namyang’s “French Cafe Double Shot” infringes its trademark term "double shot", and demanded all drinks from Namyang with "double shot" labels to be removed from the market. Starbucks also added that the label “Double Shot” has been created and in use since 2002 in the USA, and 2006 in Korean market.

▲ Starbucks' DOUBLESHOT and Namyang's French Cafe Double Shot on display stand

Namyang commented that the term of "double shot" only means the amount of espresso shots in a drink and the claims will be not accepted for infringing trademark. Namyang’s new premium coffee products line “French Café Double Shot” launched last May.  

* This posting is restructured based on a Korean article from ‘news.cnbnews.com’ by CBN news.

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WIPS Global Advanced FAQ : Fee & Payment ①

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