Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Overview of Samsung's 3G patent assertions against Apple: 13 patents in 9 countries

Last week, Apple filed a motion in the Southern District of California to obtain documents from Qualcomm that Apple hopes will enable it to fend off Samsung's 3G (UMTS) patent assertions around the globe. The Litigating Apple blog reported. Meanwhile, Samsung has opposed Apple's request.

Apple's motion contained some information on Samsung's assertions of UMTS patents against Apple around the globe. I have evaluated the filing and done some additional research. I can now, finally, list 13 UMTS-related patents Samsung asserts against Apple, and I can say in which jurisdictions Samsung does so and in which ones it owns equivalents of such patents that it has not yet asserted.

The list may be incomplete with respect to Italy. Apple's filing notes that Samsung filed a preliminary injunction motion against the iPhone 4S in Milan (as I reported). By the time of the Southern California filing, Apple had not yet seen that complaint, so it may relate to patents not previously asserted in Italy or anywhere else.

When I firstly published this post, the list was also incomplete with respect to Korea, but thanks to Twitter user Bintz (@dynafeel), a mechanical engineer and designer, I have been able to connect the dots between the 3G patents Samsung asserts in Korea and the ones they assert elsewhere.

It seems that the United States and Korea are the only jurisdictions in which Samsung is currently asserting a combination of standards-related and other patents. In the United States, Samsung is asserting 17 different patents, 9 of which are standards-related. In Korea, three of Samsung's four asserted patents are standards-related, but a fourth one may not be (though its scope is similar to that of a standards-related patent held by Samsung). In all other jurisdictions, it appears that all of Samsung's assertions are UMTS-related.

Here's a list of the patents, sorted by U.S. patent numbers (even the patents that are not yet asserted in the U.S. all have U.S. equivalents):

U.S. Patent Application No. 2006/0252377

"Method and apparatus for reporting inter-frequency measurement using RACH message in a communication system" (link)

European equivalent (EP1720373) asserted in France and Italy

U.S. Patent No. 6,598,202

"Turbo interleaving apparatus and method" (link)

European equivalent (EP1097516) asserted in France and the Netherlands; local equivalent (KR100330234, application number KR1020000027143) asserted in Korea

U.S. Patent No. 6,928,604

"Turbo encoding/decoding device and method for processing frame data according to QoS" (link)

asserted in the Northern District of California; European equivalent (EP1005726) asserted in Germany, the UK, and Italy; Australian equivalent (AU722598) asserted in Australia

U.S. Patent No. 7,050,410

"Apparatus and method for controlling a demultiplexer and a multiplexer used for rate matching in a mobile communication system" (link)

asserted in the Northern District of California; European equivalent (EP1114528) asserted in Germany and the Netherlands; Australian equivalent (AU751376) asserted in Australia

U.S. Patent No. 7,200,792

"Interleaving apparatus and method for symbol mapping in an HSDPA mobile communication system" (link)

asserted in the Northern District of California

U.S. Patent No. 7,362,867

"Apparatus and method for generating scrambling code in UMTS mobile communication system" (link)

asserted in the Northern District of California

U.S. Patent No. 7,386,001

"Apparatus and method for channel coding and multiplexing in CDMA communication system" (link)

asserted in the Northern District of California; European equivalent (EP1357675) asserted in the UK

U.S. Patent No. 7,447,516

"Method and apparatus for data transmission in a mobile telecommunication system supporting enhanced uplink service" (link)

asserted in the Northern District of California; local equivalents asserted in Australia (AU2005202512), Japan (JP4299270) and Korea (KR100933144, based on application KR1020050029192)

U.S. Patent No. 7,486,644

"Method and apparatus for transmitting and receiving data with high reliability in a mobile communication system supporting packet data transmission" (link)

asserted in an ITC complaint and in the District of Delaware; Australian equivalent (AU2005239657) asserted in Australia

U.S. Patent No. 7,512,153

"Apparatus and method for controlling a reverse traffic rate in a mobile communication system" (link)

European equivalent (EP1478136) asserted in the Netherlands

U.S. Patents No. 7,639,650 and 7,903,618

"Apparatus and method for allocating OVSF codes and I/Q channels for reducing peak-to-average power ratio in transmitting data via enhanced up-link dedicated channels in WCDMA systems" (link)

European equivalent (EP1714404) asserted in the UK, France, and Italy; Australian equivalent (AU2050213087) asserted in Australia

U.S. Patent No. 7,675,941

"Method and apparatus for transmitting/receiving packet data using pre-defined length indicator in a mobile communication system" (link)

asserted in the Northern District of California; local equivalents asserted in Australia (AU2006241621), Japan (JP4642898), and Korea (KR100913900)

U.S. Patent No. 7,706,348

"Apparatus and method for encoding/decoding transport format combination indicator in CDMA mobile communication system" (link)

asserted in an ITC complaint and in the District of Delaware; European equivalent (EP1188269) asserted in Germany, France, and the Netherlands; Australian equivalent (AU765735) asserted in Australia

On Friday, a court in The Hague, Netherlands, will hand a ruling on the FRAND-related aspects of Samsung's request for an injunction against some Apple products.

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