IP War Among Smartphone Players

 

Abhishek Saxena

HTC Corporation

Taiwan

 

The art of war is simple enough. Find out where your enemy is. Get at him as soon as you can. Strike him as hard as you can, and keep moving on - Ulysses S. Grant

 

Telecom companies have been battling for the lead in the Smartphone market since 2001. This year alone has seen almost every major Smartphone Company sued for infringing patents.

 

In 2001, NTP sued BlackBerry maker, Research in Motion (RIM) for allegedly infringing at least five of its US patents on radio frequency wireless text communication. The case made headlines, prompting the US government to become involved. In March 2006, RIM finally agreed to pay NTP $612.5 million to settle the dispute, avoiding a possible shutdown of its service across the US. Following the settlement, RIM took out full-page adverts in US newspapers to express its concerns about the state of the US patent system.

 

To avoid such situations, companies are required to sign a contract to buy or share the IP before they use other's IP. Sharing of IP between the companies is possible only if both the companies have strong patent profile. Like Qualcomm leads the 3G and now 4G patents. Samsung spots 2nd position in 4G patents but is having a lower rank in 3G patents. So, Samsung has to pay an unforeseen amount to Qualcomm while developing 3G phones but in 4G Qualcomm will inevitably have a less powerful grip than it did in 3G.

 

Now every Smartphone player has its own patent list and if sued they reply with counter-sue to settle the dispute.

In October 2009, Nokia filed a suit against Apple, accusing the company of hitching a "free-ride" on its intellectual property. In December 2009, Apple filed a searing countersuit accusing Nokia of the same thing. Apple denies infringement and asserts that Nokia attempted to copy the iPhone and infringed 13 Apple patents in the process. The company seeks dismissal of Nokia's complaint in its entirety, with prejudice, damages for Nokia's alleged infringements, interest and legal fees.

 

Recently HTC Corporation filed a complaint with the United States International Trade Commission (ITC) to halt the importation and sale of the iPhone, iPad and iPod in the United States. HTC claims five HTC patents are being infringed on by Apple. The move is in response to a lawsuit filed by Apple against HTC in March. Apple claims that HTC is infringing on 20 Apple patents related to iPhone technology.

 

These IP related disputes have the potential to affect the consumers adversely sooner or later. The lawsuit that Apple filed against HTC, for eg., opens up a lot of questions about the future of Android phones like the Nexus One and the cell phone market, in general. But specifically, what about the consumers who have purchased HTC Android phones since Apple wants HTC to shutdown these models.
Consumers will also end up paying more for the same phone due to some trivial patents occupied by other company. It seems the concerned authorities will have to intervene to avoid the consumers from directly being affected by such disputes in future.