Samsung and Apple - A unique Love Story

It is really an odd world out there. Friends turn foes and foes turn friends. The latest news in the world of patent litigation comes from the world's top smartphone manufactures - Apple and Samsung.


Apple had filed a lawsuit on April 15, 20011 in the Northern District of California, alleging that Samsung has copied the look and feel of its iPad Tablet and iPhone Smartphone thereby infringing on 10 patents and 2 trademarks owned by Apple. In focus is the Samsung Galaxy S 4G which Apple believes has "very close" resemblance to the iPhone 3G/3GS series. A few more products from Samsung (Epic 4G, Nexus S, and Galaxy Tab) are also believed to be similar and infringing on Apple's Intellectual Property. Out of the 10 patents, seven are utility patents. This number was later increased to eight as one patent was dropped from the lawsuit and two more were added. The number of design patent has also now increased to five from the initial three patents. The design patents are D617,334, titled "Graphical user interface for a display screen or portion thereof", D604,305, titled "Graphical user interface for a display screen or portion thereof ", D593,087, titled "Electronic device ", D622,270, titled "Electronic device" and D504,889, titled "Electronic device ". A few diagrams as provided in the design patents are illustrated below for the benefit of the reader:

Apple had sought preliminary injunction against Samsung as well as damages for the loss that Apple has suffered as a result of the copying when it filed the lawsuit.  The interesting part is to wait and watch whether this will lead to a proper trial with a judgement being delivered or will it as usual lead to an out of court "undisclosed" settlement combined with the typical "licensing" of each other's technology by both the parties. 


In response to Apple's lawsuit against it, Samsung has requested US International Trade Commission to ban the import of Apple products into the United States. It was reported on July 1, 2011 that Samsung has filed a lawsuit in Seoul, South Korea, alleging that Apple infringes on five patents in the field of Wireless Communication Standard and Mobile Interface assigned to Samsung. This is the approach that is usually followed by large corporations when they are in the middle of such lawsuits. However, what makes this particular situation different that others is the fact that both the parties happen to be heavily dependent on each others technology and expertise and a major source of revenue for each party is derived from others. For example, Apple happens to be Samsung's second biggest client after Sony. Samsung exports a major chunk of hardware that it manufactures in display and mobile technology to Apple. An increase in business for one party reflects directly as an increase in business for the other party. It is more than just "amusing" to see two big players in the smartphone market who depend heavily on each other for their profits to go against each other and file lawsuits. Maybe, juts maybe, it is a business strategy that people like me don't get.    


Another interesting observation to make is how Google approaches the events that are unfolding. Apple in its lawsuit had also alleged that the interface on smartphones manufacture by Samsung resemble its iPad and iPhone's interface.  Samsung's smartphones run on Android (Google) and the Android based smartphones have been a major threat to Apple's product this year. Is Apple indirectly targeting Google or is this the "lull" before the storm? Only time will tell.

PCT Applications - How to determine the corresponding National Phase Entry

Patent Cooperation Treaty (as in force from April 1, 2002) allows an inventor to file a single "International Application" (commonly known as the PCT OR WIPO application) and thereafter file subsequent "National Phase Application" in each of the contracting states that are part of the PCT treaty. By default, each of the contracting states are designated when an International Application is filed.

The PCT application in itself does not result in the grant of the patent. The inventor/applicant has to subsequently enter a national or regional phase by filing a subsequent application in the contracting states/country. In order to enter into the national phase, the applicant has a time period of 30 or 31 months depending on the country where entry into the National Phase is desired.

The PCT application is usually published after 18 months from the filing date of the PCT application. Further, an International Search Report is usually provided by an International Search Authority that is used by National Patent Offices as well as the applicant to assess the patentability of the invention covered in the International Patent Application.

Patent applications are considered to be in the same family if they have at least priority claim identical. Examples of family member are Continuation application, continuation in part, divisional application, patent of addition. In order to determine the family information, one can look up the family information in patent databases such as Delphion, Micropatent, Total Patent, and QPAT. There are a few free patent databases also that provide information about the family members.

In order to determine the family information when a PCT number is available, one can search the WIPO site and check the national phase information corresponding to the PCT application. One of the problems that patent professionals will face while searching for corresponding national phase patent application numbers for a PCT application is that information will be available for certain patent offices and will be missing for certain other patent offices.

The primary reason for this is that regional patent offices fail to inform the WIPO office about the status of the National Phase Application. Other reasons include lack of timely updates on the WIPO site about national phase status and unpublished application in the national phase.

If you are aware that a certain PCT application has entered the National Phase and the corresponding number is not available on sites such as Delphion, Espacenet.com, and WIPO, then how do you determine the correct number.

The first and the foremost thing to do is mark certain information such as Assignee, Inventor, Title and Priorty date. Thereafter, using one of  Assignee, Inventor, Title or Priorty date, perform a search on the regional patent office site. In case of India, you can search on sites such as bigpatents and IPO.

You may get more than one results for your query. In order to finalize and determine the correct national phase application, compare the priority date of each patent application that was returned based on the query to the priority date of the PCT application.

The application for which the priority date matches with the PCT is your national phase application corresponding to the PCT application.

Nortel Patent Portfolio - Trading Intellectual Property

Patents have long been viewed as strategic assets. However, the last decade has witnessed the transition of patents from strategic assets to financial assets in the industrial sector. Patents are no longer used as a tool to keep the competitors at bay or to determine the next niche area for investing or directing the efforts of the R&D team, but also as financial tools for generating profits through licensing, and selling. Many big companies such as IBM, Microsoft, Sony, and Apple have a large percentage of their revenue derived from such licensing and selling of their patent portfolio. There are many "infamous" patent trolls also present in the market who have been active in creating a diverse patent portfolio and even more active in filing law suits and claiming infringement or royalty from players in the market. These trolls do not have any specific product to showcase and their business usually thrives on revenue generated by forcing companies to either enter into licensing deals or to face the wrath of law suit.

In a recent press release, it was reported that Nortel is planning to auction its patent portfolio. This news has caught the attention of many large companies, including trolls, who are eager to stock up their Intellectual Property assets and would be continuously monitoring how the entire event unfolds. Intellectual Ventures would be one of the players expected to be aggressive in buying these patents from Nortel. Many lawyers and patent attorneys, who specialize in patent valuation would be busy in evaluating and assessing the "monetization index" of these patents. Patent teams from all over would be engaged in going through the huge patent portfolio of Nortel and differentiating the useful and useless patents.

The following tables capture the patent portfolio and define the key technology areas covered by Nortel's Patents.

Number of Nortel Patents/Patent Applications Worldwide: 9486* as on June 28, 2011.

Top IPCs:

The IPC definitions can be accessed from this link: http://www.wipo.int/ipcpub/#refresh=page

Top US Class:

The US class definitions can be accessed from this link: http://www.uspto.gov/web/patents/classification/

Some of the top inventors who have worked for Nortel in these technologies include:

TONG WEN , ZHU PEIYING , FONG MO-HAN , SYLVAIN DANY , MA JIANGLEI , ZHANG HANG , JIA MING , BESHAI MAGED E , LUCIDARME THIERRY , ROBERTS KIM B , BAKER JOHN S , HASSELHORN WALTER C , Read Clifford D , ALLAN DAVID , STRAWCZYNSKI LEO , KWONG HERMAN , AKHTAR HASEEB , BEN RACHED NIDHAM , AWEYA JAMES , BRUECKHEIMER SIMON DANIEL , PERSONS LAWRENCE M , MCCORMACK TONY , MONTUNO DELFIN Y , BRAGG NIGEL , ROBERTS KIM BYRON ,  OUELLETTE MICHEL , RABIPOUR RAFI , GRAVES ALAN F , VRZIC SOPHIE , BROWN MICHAEL , KHALIL MOHAMED , WU GENG , YOAKUM JOHN H , YU DONG-SHENG , LI JUN , NOVAK ROBERT , EPWORTH RICHARD EDWARD , CHHEDA ASHVIN , MAUGER ROY HAROLD , MUNTER ERNST A , O CONNOR NEIL , ASHWOOD-SMITH PETER , ROBINSON ALAN , STEER DAVID G , FELSKE KENT , STEER DAVID , WU SHIQUAN , JANG KE-CHI , XU HUA

It would be interesting to check how many of the above inventors still work for Nortel. If i were a large corporation, i would be certainly interested in pulling the above inventors into my R&D team.

*This figure does not include the patent applications that have not been published as on June 28, 2011