New Version Of The Apple-HTC Agreement Reveals More About The Deal

Samsung has filed a redacted version of the Apple-HTC settlement and license agreement as part of the injunction court hearing scheduled to take place in federal court later today. Samsung wanted the document included to see if there is an overlap in patents included in its case against Apple and in the Apple-HTC agreement.

At stake is the $1.05 billion patent judgment against the Korean company, which Samsung wants reduced or thrown out. Apple, meanwhile, is seeking an additional $535 million in damages.

A more heavily redacted version of the agreement was released two weeks ago. The latest one made available is less blacked-out, but much of the document is still not visible. According to the available information, HTC and Apple will have nonexclusive access to some of each others’ patents. Apple agreed not to sue over certain products, but its design patents appear to be excluded. Blog FOSS Patents’ posted the PDF and an analysis focusing on the scope of the agreement:

The rubber-banding (‘381) patent can’t be worked around without losing its key benefit, but it obviously doesn’t cover other (inferior) forms of scrolling on a multi-touch device, such as the “blue glow”. For tap-to-zoom it appears that infringement of the ‘163 patent can be avoided without any significant impact on usability. An injunction over this patent would be next to meaningless apart from a purely symbolical significance. The tricky part is the pinch-to-zoom API (‘915) patent. As I predicted, Apple is disputing that Samsung’s purported workaround steers clear of infringement.

Late last month, a U.S. court ordered Apple to provide Samsung with details of a licensing deal it reached with HTC. Apple and the Taiwan-based mobile maker unexpectedly settled their remaining lawsuits on November 10 after two-and-a-half years of legal wrangling and accusations that each company had infringed on the others’ patents.