It’s nearly Christmas: the time of mince pies, good cheer, and, apparently, settling patent disputes with the potential to cost you hundreds of millions of dollars each year.
With that in mind, Apple has agreed a patent licensing deal with Swedish telecom company Ericsson, ending a dispute in which Ericsson was accused by Apple of engaging in, “abusive licensing practices.”
When Lars Magnus Ericsson installed a telephone in his car, he proved you could communicate from the road. But while the first mobile phone was indeed mobile, it was anything but simple to use.
Ericsson drove around Sweden and, when it was time to place a call, he would pull off to the side of the road next to telephone poles. Then his wife, Hilda, would take out two long sticks and hook them over a pair of telephone wires. Ericsson would then crank a handle on the phone to get a signal from the operator.
Pretty slick for 1910.
Claiming that Apple is infringing on several of its patents, Ericsson has ramped up its legal efforts against the company by expanding lawsuits to cover Germany, Britain and the Netherlands.
“Apple continues to profit from Ericsson’s technology without having a valid license in place,” said Kasim Alfalahi, chief intellectual property officer at Ericsson, adding that he is confident the courts will resolve the matter fairly.
The Apple-Ericsson confrontation continues to heat up. The U.S. International Trade Commission says it will investigate Apple, based on two complaints alleging that Cupertino illegally infringed on Ericsson patents.
Ericsson previously asked the ITC to block Apple products, such as the iPhone, from selling in the United States while the case is being investigated.
In one to file under “N” for “Never happening,” mobile phone company Ericsson has filed seven new lawsuits asking the U.S. International Trade Commission to block Apple products, such as the iPhone, from selling in the United States.
The lawsuits allege that Apple is infringing on up to 41 patents, related to user interfaces, battery saving, and operating systems. Kasim Alfalahi, Ericsson’s chief intellectual property officer, claims that the company has offered Apple a license for the technology, but has been turned down.
Ericsson’s former CEO has gone on the record as saying his company should have taken the iPhone more seriously when it arrived back in 2007. Today, everyone takes the iPhone seriously — and there are the lawsuits to prove it.
In the latest of these, Apple and Ericsson are suing each other after failing to come to an agreement about the pricing of Ericsson-owned patents used by Apple.
Apple is claiming Ericsson is chasing excessive royalty rates, while Ericsson is holding out for more cash.
And when you’re talking about a handset like the iPhone 6, which sold upwards of 10 million units in its first weekend, who can blame it for trying?
It’s a pretty good bet that iPhones and iPads will be responsible for 3G/4G traffic spikes around the Moscone Center in San Francisco this week as Apple developers lucky enough to score a ticket attend WWDC. Beyond this week, however, it seems that iPhone users have a tendency to gobble up a large amount of data – more so than other platforms including Android.
On average, iPhone owners represent about 20% of smartphone customers for mobile carriers worldwide. You might expect that those customers would amount to around 20% of data usage. That isn’t the case as iPhone users account for an average 45% of carrier data traffic and data use by iPhone users is more consistent than data consumed by Android customers.
