By Sakthi Prasad and Poornima Gupta
Dec 6 (Reuters) - Lawyers for Samsung Electronics Co Ltd
filed a redacted copy of a 10-year patent licensing agreement
between Apple Inc and Taiwan's HTC Corp in a U.S. court late on
Wednesday following a judge's order.
The Korean electronics company had earlier filed a motion to
compel Apple -- with which it is waging a bitter legal battle
over mobile patents across several countries -- to reveal
details of a settlement that was made with HTC on Nov. 10 but
which have been kept under wraps.
The court last month ordered Apple to disclose to Samsung
details of the legal settlement that the iPhone maker reached
with HTC, including terms of the 10-year patents licensing
agreement.
Legal experts say the question of which patents are covered
by the Apple-HTC settlement, and licensing details, could be
instrumental in Samsung's efforts to thwart Apple's subsequent
quest for a permanent sales ban on its products.
The redacted copy excludes key specifics such as the royalty
payments HTC would have to make to Apple for using some of the
U.S. company's patents. Also excluded are details of some of
HTC's covered products that were part of the licensing deal.
The court order had stated that "only the pricing and
royalty terms of license agreements may be sealed."
However, Samsung lawyers said in the filing that they had
withheld a few other details of the licensing agreement as
requested by Apple and HTC.
As per the Apple-HTC agreement, the licenses do not include
Apple's design patents, according to a filing made with the
District Court of Northern California.
Apple and HTC also agreed to fully paid-up, royalty-free,
non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable licenses to
certain of the other's patents.
Apple has agreed not to initiate legal action over some of
HTC's covered products. The details of the products were not
disclosed.
The copy of the Apple-HTC deal filed with the court
"incorporates redactions HTC requested and the redactions Apple
requested, which are a subset of HTC's redactions. Samsung takes
no position on whether the redactions are appropriate at this
time," Samsung's lawyers said in a filing.
If all the Apple patents are included -- including the "user
experience" patents that the company has previously insisted it
would not license -- it could undermine the iPhone maker's
efforts to permanently ban the sale of products that copy its
technology.
In a previous court filing, Samsung argued that it was
"almost certain" that the HTC deal covered some of the patents
involved in its own litigation with Apple.
The case in U.S. District Court, Northern District of
California, is Apple Inc v. Samsung Electronics Co Ltd et al,
No. 11-1846.
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