Last
Friday, February 28th, the German Mannheim Regional Court threw
out three cases filed by “patent troll” IPCom, which had filed complaints
against Apple and HTC. With two suits
filed against Apple and a third against HTC, IPCom had aimed to monetize its
patents purchased from Bosch involving 3G/UMTS wireless technology. The
decisions to throw out these cases was made in three separate rulings by the
aforementioned court, with IPCom’s Bosch patent portfolio covering
standard-essential patents (SEPs) being involved in each one.
IPCom
is a non-practicing IP licensing firm, which explicitly states on its website: “Our
core business is the global licensing of patents from our own portfolio to
producers in industry.” The firm has been comparatively unsuccessful in its
legal recourses, but was successful in winning a settlement from Deutsche
Telekom in 2013.
This
case study in patent troll litigation is indicative of the larger issues at
work. The FOSS Patents blog also
covered this court decision, wherein author Florian Mueller discussed Apple’s
historic success against patent trolls in Germany due to its repeated use of
successful law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer. Mueller also highlights
IPCom’s ongoing issues regarding its patent portfolio, in that many large
manufacturers are working to invalidate various patents.
I further discuss my thoughts on this topic at the following link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bWxfnU5p4E
I further discuss my thoughts on this topic at the following link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bWxfnU5p4E
This demonstrates that patent trolling is a universal issue. Has the EU or Mannheim courts implemented any regulation to lower the amount of patent litigation cases in regards to patent trolling. The U.S. has followed pursuit through the Obama administration as mentioned in the State of the Union address back in January.
ReplyDelete