Ericsson Sues Samsung on Patents

Ericsson, the market leader in mobile phone networking equipment, filed a lawsuit against Samsung, the biggest smartphone maker, claiming that it had infringed on 24 of Ericsson’s software and hardware patents.

The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Tyler, Texas, was the second brought by Ericsson in six years against Samsung, which climbed atop the smartphone market largely by using Google’s Android operating system, the most widely used operating system, instead of relying on its own. The lawsuit involves patents that are considered essential and part of broad mobile industry standards, as well as nonessential patents covering elements of a device’s user interface. One involves the software technology Ericsson uses to translate speech into digital information and back again. The lawsuit, which asks for unspecified damages, is intended to raise the pressure on Samsung to negotiate. In its suit, Ericsson also alleged that Samsung, in a bid to compel Ericsson to lower its royalty demands, had refused to license Samsung’s own industry-standard patents that are essential for modern mobile telephony.