The last one had heard about these two tech biggies, was that each one of them had won a case against each other, with Samsung winning a bigger one, that was getting permission to sell its Galaxy Tab in Australia. Expectedly, it was assumed that one would not here any more of these fights until the next year, but there is more to the story.
Mueller detailed the newly added patents-in-question, along with the two new law firms to its complaints first filed this April in Germany. The additions include the following patents:
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European Patent 1679803: “Method for configuring gain factors for uplink service in radio telecommunication system”
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European Patent 1720373 (B1): “Method and apparatus for reporting inter-frequency measurement using RACH message in a communication system”
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Deutsches Patent 10040386: “Speech output device for data displayed on mobile telephone converts data from display into speech data for output via loudspeaker”
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European Patent 1215867: “Emoticon input method for mobile terminal”
The most interesting of the lot is one, which relates to text input for a “smiley” emoticon, created by typing “:-)” on a device. Would this now be a serious ‘smiley’ for Apple, as Mueller noted, “Smiley or not, patents are serious business.”
He further detailed the matter that there is a possibility of Apple running in with a number of similar infringement lawsuits against Samsung in Germany. He said,”I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple decided to respond to this escalation by bringing several additional patent infringement lawsuits against Samsung in Germany.” He further noted, “Since Apple already has six lawsuits going against Samsung in Mannheim, it might start a few new ones in Munich.”
Muller tweeted a number of tweets to let his followers know about the case. Here is a collection of tweets made by Mueller in regards to the said lawsuit:
Talking about Samsung’s decision to withdraw the complaint related to baseband chips in the iPhone 4S, Samsung quoted that the ruling it has requested for are for those Apple products, that do not utilize Qualcomm baseband chips and iPhone 4S is the only Apple smartphone making use of a Qualcomm baseband chip. However, one would not conclude that Samsung has dropped all charges against iPhone 4S in general.
Bottomline, it would be interesting, as to how does the Tech Giant, Apple replies to these patent infringement claims.
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