Samsung Electronics has requested four patents owned by Ericsson to be invalidated to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) on January 29, TheElec has learned.
Two of the four patents are standard essential patents (SEP). One, Patent 10,454,655, deals with wireless handset, wireless telecommunication network nodes and their operation mechanism, and two, Patent 9,532,355, deals with system information transfer on downlink sharing channel.
Earlier on January 22, Samsung had requested USPTO invalidate two patents owned by Ericsson.
The Swedish telecom giant filed its lawsuit against its Korean counterpart first. Ericsson claimed that Galaxy S20 and Galaxy A51 infringed on its Patents 10,454,655 and 9,532,355 in a court in the US. The patents were registered in the US on October 2019 and December 2016, respectively. Samsung is asking USPTO to invalidate these patents.
Samsung and Ericsson’s legal dispute as their SEP cross-licensing contract signed in 2014 expired last year. The pair had disagreements over the amount of royalties Samsung needs to pay Ericsson.
On December 7, Samsung has asked a court in Wuhan to calculate the use fee it needs to pay for Ericsson’s SEP. On December 11, Ericsson field a lawsuit against Samsung in the Eastern District Court of Texas, claiming Samsung has violated FRAND terms for its SEP patents.
Ericsson has so far claimed that Samsung infringed on eight of its patents to the court in Texas.
Last month, Samsung also requested an injunction to US’ International Trade Commission to block imports of Ericsson’s network kits to the US.
Ericsson CEO Borje Ekholm ha said at the conference call last month that it couldn’t answer how long the cross-licensing negotiations will go on for.
In 2020, Ericsson posted 232.4 billion SEK in sales and 27.8 billion SEK in operating income, a rise of 2% and 163%, respectively, from 2019. The company has said it expects an operating loss of between 1 billion SEK to 1.5 billion SEK in the first quarter due to the delay in royalties negotiations with Samsung.
