Articles About Samsung

22September

Relying on Sole Expert Witness, Samsung Wins Patent Case…Twice

By Quandary Peak Research

Samsung prevailed in the retrial of a patent infringement case earlier this month as the jury found the asserted patents to be valid but not infringed. Quandary Peak software expert Dr. Nenad Medvidovic was called as an expert witness by Samsung in both the original trial, which took place in July, and the retrial, which was ordered after the jury was given documents accidentally. Dr. Medvidovic was the only witness called by Samsung’s counsel, Kirkland & Ellis LLP.

The plaintiff in the case, Cascades Computer Innovation LLC, was dubbed the “original patent troll” by IP Law & Business magazine back in 2006. The company has been buying up patents to assert against technology companies since the late 1990s. Recent trends, however, seem to indicate that patent activity by non-practicing entities may be declining.

More details about the case can be found at Law360.

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8April

Ericsson Gets Paid in Patent Dispute Case Against Samsung

By Quandary Peak Research

Victories in patent dispute cases sometimes amount to little more than a moral victory. One company sues another and the judgment, if ever actually awarded, hardly covers the cost of legal fees.

On January 27, 2014, however, many were reminded that a legal victory can also carry with it pronounced economic benefits, as Ericsson experienced when it won a $650 million award in a drawn out case against Samsung.

The victory boosted the Swedish company’s stock price 2.4 percent in one day and included royalties that will provide the company with cash for years to come. JP Morgan analyst Rod Hall noted that “Ericsson’s settlement with Samsung is going to be an important future driver of its earnings. The ongoing revenue could be approximately 2.1 billion Swedish crowns annually and, with these revenues having 70% ongoing margin, they could add 5.4 percent to 2014 earnings per share.”

In this case, moral victory came with economic upside.

A Look Back on the Details of the Case

In 2001, Samsung signed a licensing deal with Ericsson involving Global System for Communications (GSM), Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS), and LTE standards that covered both handset and network patents. Everything was fine until 2011 when the deal ran out, and Ericsson asked for a significantly higher royalty rate.

Samsung refused the deal on FRAND (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory) grounds. Owners of standard-essential patents are often required to license those patents on FRAND terms. Samsung asserted that after Ericsson sold its 50% stake in mobile phone maker Sony Ericsson to Sony for $1.46 billion in 2011, they were repositioning themselves as nothing more than another patent troll.

After Samsung’s accusations, Ericsson took legal action by filing a complaint in the District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. Samsung retaliated by filing a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission over the […]

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5November

Runaway Growth: China’s Dominant Role in the Smartphone Market

By Ed Flores

In 2012, China became the world’s largest smartphone market, having accounted for 26.5% of global smartphone shipments that year. That put it well ahead of the US, whose market share dipped from 21.3% to 17.8% year over year (2011-2012), according to research firm IDC. Looking forward, both countries seem set to continue along those divergent paths.

Chinese Consumers Rapidly Shifting to Smartphones

China now has over 1 billion mobile phone subscribers, and many of them are shifting from traditional mobile phones to smartphones. Domestic demand gets a boost in large part due to enhanced accessibility, more coverage, and lower prices, all of which stem from increased competition in the marketplace from the main players—Samsung, Lenovo, Yulong Coolpad, and Apple, Inc. What’s more, subsidies by operators like China Mobile and China Unicom are also making first-time purchases less expensive, which attracts even more buyers.

Cultural forces also provide a tailwind for domestic demand, as owning a smartphone equates to having social status, something that consumers are becoming increasingly aware of as the broader Chinese economy expands.

The effect of these forces on demand is remarkably quantified when you take a look at shipments year over year. In 2012, China shipped some 213 million smartphones, which was more than double the amount shipped in 2011. This year, according to research firm IDC, that figure is set to hit 360 million with further growth to 450 million by 2014, indicating truly astounding growth rates.

The rapid growth should only continue from here. Below, we’ll highlight two potential — and rather paramount — future shifts in the smartphone landscape, the confluence of which we believe serve as compelling reasons to believe China’s smartphone dominance should continue.

China Set to Issue 4G Licenses Soon

According to an October 23 statement issued by China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, China […]

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25September

Smartphone Patent Wars: Timeline of the Apple v. Samsung Legal Battle

By George Edwards

Over the years, we’ve seen plenty of intellectual property lawsuits involving Apple Inc. (who, ahem, does not like to be called Apple, Inc.). Apple went after Digital Research and Microsoft during the ’80s and ’90s for copying the “look and feel” of the Macintosh OS. But in the last five years, Apple has initiated a flurry of litigation, commonly known as the mobile device patent wars, that is likely to have profound legal and historical significance.http:

The back-and-forth legal sparring has been largely between Apple and Samsung, with suits over both design and utility patents that have captivated the legal community, investors, and followers of software patent litigation. Below, we highlight some of the important milestones in this high stakes legal tussle.

Click the image for a graphical view of the timeline.

April 15, 2011: Apple files complaint in US District Court for the Northern District of California against Samsung for patent infringement of iPhone and iPad. At the heart of the suit are three design patents or trade dress infringements. Apple accuses Samsung of “slavishly” copying their products in a way that was so “pervasive” as to make them indistinguishable from one another.

June 2011: Samsung countersues Apple over infringement of 3G data transfer features and nine other patents in South Korea, Japan, and Germany.

August 9, 2011: Apple wins a design-related preliminary injunction to halt sales of Galaxy Tab 10.1 in the European Union. Samsung appeals.

August 16, 2011: The injunction banning sales ban of Galaxy 10.1 lifted in European Union, but not in Germany.

September 2011: Apple’s injunction upheld in German courts. Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 sales remain halted there. Shortly after, Dutch […]

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17September

Edwards Tapped to Testify on GPS, Navigation, and Mapping Patents

By Quandary Peak Research

Dr. George Edwards, Quandary Peak’s resident guru of location-based mobile services, has been asked to testify as an expert witness in a lawsuit alleging infringement of a patent for “Method and System for Providing an Image Vector-Based Traffic Information.” The case, Porto Technology, Co., Ltd. et al. v. Cellco Partnership d/b/a Verizon Wireless, was filed Sept. 20, 2012 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.

Claim 1 of the patent at issue in the case, US Patent 6,233,518, discloses a method of providing an image-based traffic information in a region having at least one time-variant real entity. The method includes forming a traffic state map, transmitting the traffic state map to a user device, and displaying an image in accordance with the traffic state map on a screen of the user device. The patent was filed in 1999 by Heung-Soo Lee and was granted in 2001.

Edwards was engaged by plaintiff’s counsel Fox Rothschild, LLP, a national law firm with over five hundred attorneys. Edwards expects to draw on his knowledge, skills, and training in a variety of mobile platforms, including Android, iOS, Windows Mobile, Windows Phone, Qualcomm Brew, Palm Web OS, and RIM BlackBerry OS. Edwards’ conclusions will be based on a technical analysis of C++ and Java source code.

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9September

Wireless and Mobile Tech Trends: Tablet Data Usage and Android Jelly Bean

By Quandary Peak Research

Cellular data usage for tablets is up a marked 48% year on year in the first quarter of 2013, according to a data consumption report released by consumer market research firm NPD Group. This isn’t a huge surprise, considering people are increasingly shifting video consumption and web browsing to tablets, and given consumers use cellular when Wi-Fi, mobile hotspots, or tethering aren’t options.

A 48% jump in data usage may seem sizable, but it still only brings cellular usage for tablets to 12% of the total market in the US—meaning only three out of every twenty-five tablets are using cellular. Taken together with Consumer Electronics Association’s survey showing that 41 percent of the online US consumers polled already own a tablet and 72 percent plan to purchase one soon, this is an indication that there is significant market share for cellular data usage (and tablets) up for grabs.

What Does That Mean for Google’s Jelly Bean?

This past July, after much speculation and fanfare, Google finally released a new update to its Android operating system. Dubbed Android 4.3 Jelly Bean, it’s not available for everyone. Google has reserved the July release exclusively for its own line of products like the new Nexus 7. Reports, however, suggest that it will soon be available for widespread use.

Early chatter from the user community seems to indicate that Android 4.3 is making devices run faster, and in particular, Kevin C. Tofel reports that users of 2012 Nexus tablets are experiencing much better performance. On gigaom.com, Tofel highlights a specific software command in Android 4.3 called TRIM that works like “the old Disk Defragmenter on Microsoft Windows PCs which cleaned up the file system and put contiguous file bits in order on the hard drive to speed up I/O performance.”

Another interesting […]

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