Revlis wireless

[ciciagt]

Microsoft sues Samsung, seeks to enforce patent agreement
Posted by Janet I. Tu

August 1, 2014 at 1:50 PM

Microsoft filed a lawsuit Friday against Samsung, seeking to enforce an agreement in which the hardware manufacturer pays royalties to Microsoft for each Android phone it produces.

Microsoft contends that certain features in the Android operating system uses patented Microsoft technology. The software giant has reached agreements with a number of hardware manufacturers in which the manufacturers pay Microsoft royalties for each Android device they produce.

Samsung was one of those companies after it reached a cross-licensing agreement with Microsoft in 2011 that gave both companies greater patent coverage related to each other’s technologies.

For two years, Samsung made those payments.

But last year, Samsung, which pays Microsoft once a year, was late with its payment and did not pay Microsoft interest for those late months.

And Microsoft is concerned Samsung may not make its payments in the future, contending that Samsung is using the September 2013 announcement that Microsoft was acquiring Nokia’s phone business as “an excuse to breach its contract,” David Howard, a Microsoft corporate vice president and deputy general counsel, said in a blog post.

Microsoft is seeking a court judgment that its acquisition of Nokia’s phone business does not invalidate its agreement with Samsung. And it’s seeking interest on the late payment.

“We don’t take lightly filing a legal action, especially against a company with which we’ve enjoyed a long and productive partnership,” “Unfortunately, even partners sometimes disagree. After spending months trying to resolve our disagreement, Samsung has made clear in a series of letters and discussions that we have a fundamental disagreement as to the meaning of our contract.

Microsoft believes that Samsung originally agreed to make royalty payments back when it was a smaller player in the smartphone market, but is balking now that its smartphone sales have quadrupled since 2011 and is now the world’s largest smartphone manufacturer.

“Consider this: When Samsung entered into the agreement in 2011 it shipped 82 million Android smartphones. Just three years later it shipped 314 million Android smartphones,” Howard said in his blog post.

The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York.

Microsoft has never disclosed how much it gets in royalties, but Brad Smith, the company’s general counsel, said in 2011 that $5 per device “seems like a fair price.”

Microsoft has reached Android-related patent licensing agreements with 19 companies. It is embroiled in court battles with one company — Motorola — over Android-related patents.

http://blogs.seattletimes.com/microsoftpri0/2014/08/01/microsoft-sues-samsung-seeks-to-enforce-patent-agreement-over-android-devices/