Ericsson Sues Samsung for Failing to Sign FRAND Agreement

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On Tuesday, Kasim Alfalahi, the chief intellectual property officer at Ericsson said in a statement that the company is suing Samsung.

Alfalahi said, “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.” He pointed out that Ericsson has over 30,000 patents and more than 100 license agreements with major industry players.

The complaint has been filed in the Eastern District of Texas, where Ericsson has its U.S. headquarters. Ericsson said it had tried to reach an agreement with Samsung for over two years on FRAND (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory) terms, but is suing only after the talks failed with Samsung refusing to accept Ericsson’s terms.

  

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However, Samsung maintains that Ericsson has been demanding prohibitively high royalty rates to renew patent portfolios, and that “Samsung has faithfully committed itself to conducting fair and reasonable negotiations with Ericsson over the past two years.”

The widespread surge in smartphone usage has change the nature of traffic on telecom networks and there has been a rise in video and music downloads which strains the capacity of telecom networks more than voice calls do.

Currently, Ericsson, which remains the world’s biggest telecom network equipment maker, and estimates that 40 percent of the entire mobile traffic in the world passes through its networks, is suffering a big drop in sales. So, it is looking towards the patents situation where industry players are already into the smartphone market war over patents.