Bloomberg reported Apple and Google’s Motorola unit are currently in negotiations to resolve their several patent disputes and have apparently exchanged “proposals on using binding arbitration to reach a licensing agreement” for standard essential patents. According to the report, Apple said in a court filing that “such an agreement could lead to a global settlement of all of their patent disputes.”
The companies have been exchanging proposals on using binding arbitration to reach a licensing agreement over patents that are essential to comply with industry standards on how phones operate. Such an agreement could lead to a global settlement of all of their patent disputes, Apple said in a filing yesterday.
“Apple is also interested in resolving its dispute with Motorola completely and agrees that arbitration may be the best vehicle to resolve the parties’ dispute,” Apple said in the filing… Motorola Mobility first raised the issue of arbitration on Nov. 5, before a federal judge in Madison, Wisconsin, threw out a breach-of-contract case that Apple had filed. The Cupertino, California-based maker of the iPhone claimed its mobile-phone competitor was misusing standard-essential patents to demand unreasonable royalties.
Earlier this month, Apple and HTC announced they reached a global settlement in multiple patent-related cases that some analysts estimated could be worth as much as $180 million to $280 million annually. As for Samsung, following the HTC settlement, many reports quoted Samsung’s Shin Jong-kyun as claiming the company does not “intend to (negotiate) at all.”
“Apple’s goal has always been to find a mutual and transparent process to resolve this dispute on terms that are fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory without the threat or taint of exclusionary remedies,” Apple General Counsel Bruce Sewell said in a Nov. 8 letter to Google that was included in the filing.
