Ericsson and Apple End Patent-Related Legal Row With Licence Deal

Ericsson said on Friday it had struck a global patent licence agreement with Apple, ending a row over royalty payments for the use of 5G wireless patents in iPhones. From a report: The Swedish telecoms equipment maker said the multi-year deal included global cross-licences for patented cellular standard-essential technologies, and granted certain other patent rights. The deal comes after Ericsson in January filed a second set of patent infringement lawsuits against the U.S. maker of iPhones. Both companies had already sued each other in the United States as negotiations failed over the renewal of a seven-year licensing contract for telecoms patents first struck in 2015. Ericsson sued first in October 2021, claiming that Apple was trying to improperly cut down the royalty rates. The iPhone maker then filed a lawsuit in December 2021, accusing the Swedish company of using "strong-arm tactics" to renew patents.

These backroom deals prove patents are farked

[greytree]

Big corps with lots of patents simply infringe knowing that anyone's whose patent they infringe will somewhere be infringing one of their own miriad of ( often stupidly vague ) patents, so they will do deals like this.

The patent system does not work to protect individual inventors.

Re:

[alvinrod]

It's just each company's lawyers egging the management on so they can look busy and justify the big paychecks. All of these legal cases end up getting settled this way at some point, typically after one or both companies realize the legal costs have surpassed whatever the disputed amount originally was.