Yesterday a Dutch court ruled that Apple must pay damages to its arch-nemesis Samsung over a patent infringement.

Samsung filed this case over a year ago, surrounding a patent regarding 3G connectivity. Specifically:

 ”Apparatus for encoding a transport format combination indicator for a communication system”

It concerns Apple’s pre-iPhone-4S devices, and it is the first patent assertion Samsung have won in the Netherlands. Samsung had pursued cases against Apple over the “infringement” of 4 separate patents, however Apple were cleared of infringement in the other three.

Samsung have had a torrid time against Apple recently, losing injunctions in France, Italy and Germany, including one case over the same patent that was ruled on by the Dutch court, and even though this can be scored as a win for Samsung, the victory is almost meaningless. According to Florian Mueller:

“The impact of today’s ruling is minimal (and the word “minimal” is more likely to be an exaggeration than an understatement). It’s not even clear that Samsung will make enough money as a result of this infringement finding to offset the 800,000 euros it now owes Apple in legal fees because it lost with respect to three of its four patents. Samsung already lost the key battle in the Netherlands over all four of those patents a few months ago when the court affirmed its previous position that Samsung was not entitled to injunctive relief. What Samsung really wanted to get is leverage over Apple to force a worldwide settlement. Tiny amounts of money won’t get Apple to settle. Samsung was trying hard to win an injunction, but failed. From a strategic point of view, it had already lost 99.9% of these cases even before today’s liability ruling came down. This really is nothing more than symbolic.”

The Dutch court has not specified the damages that are paid, however, as Mueller speculates, Samsung will be lucky to recover the legal fees owed to Apple because of the three unsuccessful cases fought along side this one.

@TiP_Stephen

Via: FOSS Patents