Earlier today Samsung announced that they have signed a deal with Google for sharing their license for 10 years. Now Samsung and Ericsson have entered into a license agreement to settle all ongoing patent related legal disputes. This agreement covers patents relating to GSM, UMTS, and LTE standards for both networks and handsets.
This illustrates Ericsson’s commitment to fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) principles, says the company. Back in November 2012, Ericsson filed a patent lawsuit against Samsung at the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, against continuing to use its technology without paying licensing fees. It demanded billions more than the previous license agreements, said Samsung.
The new agreement includes an initial payment and ongoing royalty payments from Samsung to Ericsson for the term of the new multi-year license agreement. This will impact Ericsson sales and net income in Q4 2013 sales by 4.2 billion Swedish Krona ($650 million) and its net income by 3.3 billion Swedish Krona ($500 million). The details of the agreement are confidential and will not be disclosed, said the company. But this indicates that Ericsson would earn billions of dollars over the years.
Regarding the new agreement, Kasim Alfalahi, Chief Intellectual Property Officer at Ericsson said,
We are pleased that we could reach a mutually fair and reasonable agreement with Samsung. We always viewed litigation as a last resort. “This agreement allows us to continue to focus on bringing new technology to the global market and provides an incentive to other innovators to share their own ideas.