UPDATE Apple Inc. and Ericsson AB are again trading lawsuits over patent licensing negotiations. Most recently, Apple accused the equipment manufacturer of “strong-arm tactics” in negotiations to renew a 2015 license for 5G mobile network technology, according to Bloomberg Law.
Apple’s lawsuit, which alleges Ericsson is not charging fair rates and is making unreasonable demands, is an answer to Ericsson’s lawsuit in October seeking a declaratory judgment that it fulfilled commitments to the European Telecommunications Standards Institute and is ready to deal under fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory terms.
“There’s every indication right now that–short of an 11th-hour agreement–Ericsson and Apple are patent litigation-bound,” Foss Patents opined. “It was high time that Apple somehow responded to the [Ericsson] complaint, so they might have made the filing now even if the operating assumption was that the issues in that Texas case would never come to judgment. But in light of the Holiday Season and the impending expiration of the current license agreement, the likelihood of infringement litigation flaring up again between these two parties has increased.”
This isn’t the companies’ first scrum. In 2015, Ericsson filed seven lawsuits against Apple alleging infringement of 41 patents, and it attempted to block the sale of the iPhone, The Guardian reported. Those lawsuits also were filed during patent negotiations. That dispute, which lasted about a year, ended happily when Ericsson signed a patent license deal with Apple, sending its shares up 8 percent, Reuters reported.
By J. Sharpe Smith Inside Towers Technology Editor
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