Apple and Google have announced a patents truce, which will have little direct effect on the smartphone industry, but is being taken as a symbolic step on the way to ending the IPR wars of the past two years. However, although talks are being held to end Apple’s bitter fights with Samsung, any rapprochement there will take a lot longer.
Various factors have raised hopes of an end to the hostilities which have distracted handset makers and wasted large sums of money on lawyers rather than R&D. Judges and shareholders have grown impatient of suits which seemed to be more about clipping rivals’ wings than defending inventions; major players have increasingly been signing cross-licensing deals, as seen in Samsung’s reconciliation with Ericsson; the jury in the latest round of Samsung/Apple litigation in San Jose called on Apple to go after Google directly if it really believes it has a case against Android.
The latest development suggests that Apple will not take that advice, and is feeling the pressure to be more conciliatory towards rivals using Google’s Android platform. It has settled a long-standing patents quarrel with its erstwhile friend and the two firms will now cooperate in some areas of patent reform.
The lawsuits date back to October 2010 and were originally filed against Motorola Mobility, which became a subsidiary of Google but is now being sold on to Lenovo (minus many of the patents for which it was acquired). Apple and Google jointly informed a federal appeals court that the cases should be dismissed, though they have not yet agreed a cross-licensing deal, so there could be further disputes ahead ‘ the dismissal notice still leaves the door open for future suits based on the same patents.
‘Apple and Google have agreed to dismiss all the current lawsuits that exist directly between the two companies,’ they said in a joint statement. ‘Apple and Google have also agreed to work together in some areas of patent reform. The agreement does not include a cross-license.’
The patents at issue still feature in some of Apple’s actions against Samsung, so the big question now is whether the iDevice maker can come to a similar pact with its biggest handset rival.
Although the patents are quite minor, and there are many other Apple/Android lawsuits continuing, the pact does indicate a declining appetite for the courtroom on Apple’s part, and a willingness to work on reform of IPR law and processes, issues which are exercising regulatory bodies in the US and Europe.
However, some analysts think Apple is merely clearing minor fights with less important competitors off its books in order to focus its energies and resources on the more important Samsung fight. ‘It’s largely symbolic,’ Michael Risch, a law professor at Villanova University, told Bloomberg. ‘Motorola isn’t as big of a competitor any more’.
Apple may also be ensuring it does not have to take on Google directly. Both companies have steered clear of a patents head-to-head over Android, except where the search giant inherited cases with its Motorola purchase, even though Google is involved indirectly because it has backed Android partners such as Samsung and HTC with advice, lobbying power and funds ‘ and Apple has been behind complaints to the European Union about Motorola and Google.
Amid this change of climate in mobile IPR, are we really seeing the first overtures for peace, in the bloody war of patents between Apple and Samsung? News of the Apple-Google deal coincided with the news that Apple and Samsing were in talks about resolving their differences.
However, hopes faded quickly. The talks were ordered by Judge Lucy Koh, who has presided over most of the key cases between the two firms in Silicon Valley, the most recent ending earlier this month in something of a score-draw. Grudging court-imposed negotiations have happened before between these two antagonists, sometimes at CEO level, with no result. The Korea Times also reported that the companies were engaged in ‘working level talks’ about the possibility of ending all lawsuits, but it was not clear whether these were also court-ordered, or at what level they took place.
And in court filings to report on the ‘progress’ of the new peace summits, there was little reason to hope for an early deal, but instead a new round in the companies’ increasingly colorful war of words. Apple pointed out remarks reportedly made by Samsung lawyer John Quinn after the recent San Jose jury verdict, in which he managed to draw comparisons with two of the US’s most bitter recent conflicts. He was quoted as saying the trial was “Apple’s Vietnam, and people are sick of it’, and followed that up, in an interview with CNET, by calling his rival a ‘jihadist’. That referred back to Apple founder Steve Jobs’s famous declaration of ‘holy war’ against Android, and Quinn insisted: ‘It’s kind of hard to talk settlement with a jihadist’.
Samsung said the remarks were irrelevant to the outcome and said it supported the ADR (alternative dispute resolution) process ordered by Koh. However, it said Apple was ‘improper’ in requesting that ADR participation would not be used against it in future injunction or royalty cases. Apple said that, without that guarantee, it would be impossible to take part in ADR.
Despite these bad signs, there is strong feeling that the two companies will reach a settlement this year, as the markets and the courts grow weary of their battles; analysts call on them to compete through innovation not litigation; and as neither succeeds in dealing a knock-out blow to the other, as seen in a string of court refusals to grant bans on sales of key products. IPR analyst Florian Mueller recently wrote on his Foss Patents blog that the hostilities should end this summer and ‘isn’t it about time that Apple looked for an exit strategy from a war it apparently can’t win?’ The same applies to Samsung, though the US firm has usually been the aggressor and so will have the most to lose from a climbdown. However, it may be that, behind the bluster and ill feeling, the companies really are seriously examining a way to end these expensive and distracting battles with minimum loss of face.