German court finds Apple to infringe Samsung’s 3G patent

apple-vs-samsung

A court in Germany has ruled that Apple’s iPhone infringes upon Samsung’s patents related to 3G wireless technology and has issued an order to stay a German Samsung v. Apple lawsuit. Patent blogger Florian Müeller who follows tech litigation explains that the case will be adjudicated only after the validity of this patent. Apple, of course, is challenging the validity of Samsung’s patent, but that will likely take years to resolve…

Florian writes on his FOSS Patents blog that Judge Andreas Voss of the Mannheim Regional Court did not detail the reasons for which the court ordered a stay.

Samsung’s patent describes a method and apparatus for reporting inter-frequency measurement using RACH message in a communication system. The Galaxy maker obviously believes its invention is essential to the cellular telecommunications standard, but Apple is going to try to invalidate that patent.

Also important, German courts usually stay infringement actions only if they identify an infringement but consider the patent-in-suit highly probable to be invalid.

Though Samsung dropped its bid to ban Apple products in Europe, though the South Korean company is still pursuing infringement damages.

Earlier this month, the European Union announced a probe of Samsung’s alleged breach of EU antitrust rules over FRAND patents that, as you know, are supposed to be licensed on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms.