Post 13: The FRAND Ruling

http://www.fosspatents.com/2013/03/itc-postpones-samsung-apple-ruling.html

The ITC, or the United States International Trade Commission, recently extended its ruling over Samsung vs Apple. This extension give the commission more time to assess the outcome of the case. The Extension was necessary due to a recently found infringement of the FRAND Patent.

"The Commission notice focuses on the scenario of an infringement finding of the asserted claims (75, 76, and 82-84) of U.S. Patent No. 7,706,348 on an "apparatus and method for encoding/decoding transport format combination indicator in CDMA mobile communication system", an allegedly UMTS-essential patent. Given the advanced stage of this investigation it's pretty clear that the Commission is presently inclined to hold Apple to have infringed at least one of the asserted claims of the '348 patent. That's why public interest considerations regarding an import ban against the accused products as well as FRAND licensing issues (relating to the history of negotiations between the parties) are now the kinds of topics on which the Commission is seeking further input."

If Samsung convinces the ITC that all the previous rulings were wrong, and Samsung does get a import ban on apple, the ban would not include current products. In fact, if Samsung were to get the ITC to rule in favor of the ban, the ban would not even apply to most of the old apple products. 

"In the proceedings before the ALJ Samsung accused only older Apple products of infringement of the '348 patent: the AT&T models of the iPhone 4 (but not the 4S or 5), 3GS and 3, and of the iPad 3G and iPad 2 3G. The specific issue here is that Apple switched baseband chip suppliers. Its newer products come with Qualcomm chips, and the licensing situation between Qualcomm and Samsung is a different one than the agreement Samsung had in place with Intel and Infineon (Intel acquired Infineon's wireless baseband chip division). The iPhone 4S and the "new iPad 4G" were the first Apple products to come with Qualcomm chips. Courts in France and Italy agreed with Apple that Samsung's license agreement with Qualcomm precluded it from seeking cellular SEP-based injunctions against Apple products incorporating Qualcomm baseband chips."

Hopefully the extension of the ruling will allow the ITC to better look over the infringement. A ban of previous Apple products would be, in my honest opinion, absolutely crazy. What do you think?