News

Apple sues Ericsson for intimidation in 5G patent negotiation

Manzana has submitted a lawsuit against Ericsson in the context of a dispute over the price of patent licenses related to technologies critical to mobile technologies. This lawsuit comes after Ericsson sued Apple in October accusing it of dealing in bad faith.

The two lawsuits, the last one filed by Apple last Friday, have been filed in the same federal court in Texas, which according to Foss Patents is the East Texas District Court. In Apple’s case, Ericsson is accused of “violate your obligations to license patents that are essential to industry standards at fair prices, and to ask for things that are unreasonable«. More specifically, Apple has also made two requests: one to reject Ericsson’s lawsuit and another to seal the lawsuit because it contains sensitive information related to business operations.

Both companies have been litigating for several years, since 2015, when in the process of negotiating this license agreement, they already sued each other. This led to Ericsson attempting to ban the iPhone from being forbidden due to a patent dispute. Then an agreement was reached, which is the one that both are trying to renew now, and which has once again brought them to court.

In this lawsuit, Apple also accuses Ericsson of using intimidation tactics in negotiations for this technology. The original agreement, which expires this month, covered 2G, 3G, and 4G network technologies, and now, in its renewal, it should also cover everything related to 5G.

Everything indicates that while the lawsuits continue their course, the negotiations will continue. Both companies are likely to reach an agreement that fixes the problem, but not without fighting first. At the moment Apple has already hired two lawyers who have worked with the company in other litigation. One of them is Ruffin Cordell, who handled the open argument against Qualcomm in 2019. The other is Joseph Mueller, who was involved in Apple’s dispute with Samsung.

Related Articles

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *