Apple and Ericsson go to court over LTE patents

Apple sued Ericsson in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, after a license agreement for Apple‘s use of Ericsson cellular technology expired, and two years of negotiations failed.

Apple seems to be taking two approaches. On the one hand, it’s claiming that Ericsson is wrong to say the relevant LTE patents (covering things like bandwidth efficiency and signal management) are “standards-essential” -- something that would mean Apple is automatically infringing by including LTE/4G functionality in its devices. On the other, Apple is saying that if these are standards-essential patents (SEPs), Ericsson is demanding too much because SEPs are supposed to be licensed on “fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory” (FRAND) terms. Apple said in its complaint that Ericsson is trying to calculate royalties based on the total phone price, rather than the price of the LTE chip. Sweden’s Ericsson said that it launched a complaint with the District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, asking the court to determine whether the royalties Ericsson wants to levy in its “global license offer” comply with its FRAND commitments.