Apple lost a round on Tuesday, when an International Trade Commission judge ruled that Apple infringed on a Motorola patent. Apple is appealing.
Today’s high-stakes patent tussles center on the current generation of smartphone technology, so-called 3G. But the next generation, 4G, is just coming into the marketplace and is expected to become the mainstream smartphone technology over the next three to five years. It promises far faster transmission and playing speeds, vastly improving the experience of listening to music and watching videos streamed to smartphones.
The march to 4G also opens the door to new vistas of patent litigation and licensing, according to a report published Thursday by iRunway, a patent research and advisory firm.
The firm’s analysis points to a shift in the smartphone intellectual-property marketplace, with Samsung’s hand strengthening. Known as a handset and memory chip maker, Samsung has invested heavily in 4G technologies, especially those that enable the efficient use of high-speed bandwidth, power management and reliability, said Animesh Kumar, a co-founder of iRunway.
Samsung, according to iRunway, is by far the largest holder of 4G patents. Apple, by contrast, does not make the Top 10 in patent count.
“Samsung is way ahead of the curve, with about 50 percent more patents than its nearest rival,” Mr. Kumar said. “And Apple will have to license a lot of 4G technology.”
Not all patents are created equal, though. IRunway also did an analysis of what it calls “seminal patents,” a category in which the firm tried to estimate the market impact, technological innovation and the legal strength of a patent. By that measure, Qualcomm ranks first, with 81 seminal patents, and Samsung is second, with 79. Qualcomm is well-known as a leader in chip sets and other technology for mobile devices, and it is a prodigious licensor. Apple’s new iPad licenses its 4G technology from Qualcomm.
Samsung’s 4G patent portfolio suggests the Korean company is in a strong position to negotiate a settlement with Apple in their current court fights — and one that might well include a lucrative licensing deal for Samsung.
But Apple may not be so eager to settle. Apple’s patent claims mainly involve the user interface technology that determines a person’s experience when using a smartphone. Samsung is not strong in user interface technologies, and most of that is determined by the smartphone operating system. Apple is suing Samsung over its smartphones that run Android, the operating system created by Google, Apple’s main target in the patent wars.