Samsung scored a win in its patent infringement battle against Apple on Wednesday when a Dutch court ruled that the iPad and iPhone maker has, in fact, used Samsung-patented technology without proper licensing. While the court shot down Samsung’s request to ban the import and sale of the iPhone 4 and iPad 2, the company has plans to use the ruling to go after compensation for Apple’s infringement.
“Samsung welcomes the decision of the court in The Hague, which again confirms that Apple makes free use of our technological innovations” Samsung said in a statement. “In accordance with this statement, we will recover adequate damages that Apple and its products have caused.”
Samsung scores a minor win in its patent infringement battle against Apple
The court ruled that the iPhone 4 and earlier infringe on a Samsung patent that describes an “apparatus for encoding a transport format combination indicator for a communication system,” or European patent EP1188269. Samsung’s other infringement claims against Apple in the case were dismissed.
This ruling is the first offensive win Samsung has had against Apple since the two companies started squaring off in court over a year ago. The win isn’t, however, as significant as Samsung is implying.
“Samsung has approximately 100,000 patents worldwide. At some point it had to win something. But it’s important to put this into perspective,” said Florian Muller of Foss Patents. ” It’s not even clear that Samsung will make enough money as a result of this infringement finding to offset the 800,000 euros it now owes Apple in legal fees because it lost with respect to three of its four patents.”
Apple and Samsung have been locked in a legal battle in several countries for months over claims that they are infringing on each other’s mobile device patents.
Mr. Muller added that what Samsung was really hoping for was a win that it could use to force Apple into a world-wide patent infringement settlement. Today’s token win in the Netherlands, however, won’t be enough to push Apple back to the negotiation table.
“From a strategic point of view, [Samsung] had already lost 99.9 percent of these cases even before today’s liability ruling came down,” Mr. Muller said. “This really is nothing more than symbolic.”