Apple says Samsung patent royalty demands unfair
July 25th, 2012 by admin

(Reuters) – Apple Inc said Samsung Electronics Co Ltd is demanding from the iPhone maker a far higher patent royalty than it pays to other licensers, at a rate the South Korean company has never sought from any other licensee.

Samsung is demanding a 2.4 percent rate on the “entire selling price” of Apple’s mobile products, the Palo Alto, California-based company said in a U.S. court filing on Wednesday. The information was contained in freshly unsealed portions of a legal brief in a high profile patent lawsuit between the two companies.

“Samsung’s royalty demands are multiple times more than Apple has paid any other patentees for licenses to their declared-essential patent portfolios,” Apple said in the documents.

However, Samsung said in a separate filing on Wednesday that its offer “is consistent with the royalty rates other companies charge” and that Apple never made a counter offer.

“Instead, it simply rejected Samsung’s opening offer, refused to negotiate further and to this day has not paid Samsung a dime for Appleā€˜s use of Samsung’s standards-essential technology,” Samsung said.

The legal filings do not disclose the rate Apple pays to other companies for standard essential patents. These are patents which Samsung has agreed to license to competitors on fair and reasonable terms, in exchange for having the technology be adopted as an industry standard.

In a court filing on Tuesday, Apple had said it should pay one-half of 1 cent per unit for each infringed standard essential patent.

Apple and Samsung, the world’s largest consumer electronics corporations, are waging legal war around the world, accusing each other of patent violations as they vie for supremacy in a fast-growing market for mobile devices.

One of the key issues in dispute between the companies is how to value Samsung’s standard essential patents, which some judges are reluctant to issue injunctions over.

A trial in San Jose, California, federal court is scheduled to start July 30.