Stefan Mileschin

Ericsson has become the latest to try to stop Samsung's mobile success by patent trolling it into oblivion.

According to Computerworld, the Swedish company has filed several patent-infringement lawsuits against Samsung in the US and filed a complaint with the International Trade Commission (ITC) asking for an import ban of a wide range of Samsung products, including the Galaxy S III and the Galaxy Note.

In the good old days, companies when faced with competition, used to go flat out to come up with something better. Now it seems they try to patent troll the company so that they buy a slice of its success, or get it banned from the shelves.

It appears Ericsson decided that Samsung, which has been patenting its technology for ages, was not paying enough. According to Samsung, Ericsson started thinking that it should be collecting a larger slice of its rival's success and jacked up the licence fees.

Ericsson seeks a limited exclusion order specifically directed to Samsung excluding from entry into the United States on certain consumer electronics, including mobile phones tablets, televisions, and media players that infringe on one or more patents, Ericsson lawyers wrote in the complaint.

The complaint says that there is a strong public interest in protecting Ericsson's valid intellectual property. We doubt that they would find any member of the public who is interested in Ericsson, whereas we would find a fair few who are interested in Samsung.

In addition to the Galaxy S III and the Galaxy Note, Ericsson alleges that Samsung infringes on its patents with the Samsung Captivate Slide as well as several TVs and the Galaxy Tab 7.7.

The disputed technologies relate to electronic devices for wireless communications and data transfer including Radio Frequency (RF) technology and in some cases standardised communication protocols including GSM, GPRS, EDGE, W-CDMA, LTE, and 802.11 Wi-Fi standards, Ericsson said in the filing.

Ericsson is clearly confident that it will win the case. It is so confident that it is taking its case to the finest court that the Eastern District of Texas can offer.

http://news.techeye.net/mobile/erics...anning-samsung