Stefan Mileschin

Samsung has filed a complaint against Ericsson with the US International Trade Commission (ITC) and wants the Swedish outfit's products banned in the Land of the Fee.

Samsung said that Ericsson had breached seven of its patents, and while that might be true, it only came after Ericsson requested an ITC US import ban on Samsung products and sued the South Korean firm for patent infringement.

This tit for tat patent suit claim is common at this moment in the patent wars, as common sense is usually out for a four hour lunch.

Samsung moaned that it sought to negotiate with Ericsson. But the Swedish outfit has proven unwilling to continue such negotiations and makes unreasonable claims, which it is now trying to enforce in court.

Samsung claims its technology is under the bonnet of Ericsson telecommunications networking equipment, such as base stations.

But Ericsson has to make more cash to make up for a big drop in sales at its network unit. The company saw a 17 percent slide in the third quarter. It saw other companies making money from licensing their patents to their rivals and thought "I'll be having some of that".

Samsung is a smaller player in the network equipment market but is coming up fast to challenge Ericsson.

Florian Mueller, a patent expert, said that no one in the industry should underestimate Samsung's ability to become a significant player, if not the leader, in a new segment of the overall market for telecommunications hardware.

Writing in his bog, he said that this makes the patent trolling strategic, rather than actually about patents

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