Apple Released Confidential License Terms with Nokia While Sanctioning Samsung for Role in Leaks
Last October, Apple filed a motion seeking sanctions against Samsung and its outside lawyers, accusing both of unlawfully sharing sensitive data about Apple's 2011 patent license agreement with Nokia. Specifically, the motion stated that a Samsung executive informed Nokia that the terms of the patent settlement were "known to him", and used that information to negotiate other patent agreements in Samsung’s favor. The license terms between Apple and Nokia were marked "Highly Confidential - Attorneys' Eyes Only", but were shared with other Samsung employees.
In January, Judge Paul S. Grewal ruled against imposing sanctions on Samsung, instead choosing to solely penalize the company's law firm, Quinn Emanuel. Now however, FOSS Patents is reporting that Apple released its confidential license terms with Nokia and the NEC while seeking sanctions against Samsung for its role in the leaks.
The license terms were viewable in a publicly accessible court proceedings document on the Internet for four months before they were removed, as Samsung has filed a new motion asking the court to reduce the penalties against its law firm:
Apple's and Nokia's scorched-earth approach to Samsung's inadvertent disclosure, and the amount of the concomitant fees Apple and Nokia incurred in pursuing those efforts, must be juxtaposed against the fact that Apple had simultaneously posted (and Nokia neglected to notice) this information on the Internet for all the world to see. The fee award should be reduced accordingly.
Samsung also added in its filing that Apple should now be required to provide information as to what happened based on "transparency and evenhandedness." A hearing on Samsung's new motion against Apple is scheduled to take place on April 8, as the company also states it may seek further sanctions against Apple after reviewing other information about the situation.
The new motion comes before a second patent infringement lawsuit between Apple and Samsung is set to begin on March 31, 2014. Samsung will only have four patents claims to bring to the upcoming trial, as Judge Koh invalidated two of its patent claims in January.
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Top Rated Comments
As a great scholar once parodied:
Interestingly, Apple's lawyers had not only likewise failed to protect the same info, but had also publicly uploaded Samsung, Google, Microsoft and Novell confidential information. So their mistakes were far broader reaching than Quinn's... and Samsung could sue Apple for divulging that info.
(And at least the junior Quinn associate had redacted most of the documents that he uploaded only to Samsung. What the Apple lawyer employee(s) posted was in the clear, and available to anyone.)
Anyway, now Quinn Emanuel thinks turnabout is fair play. If Apple's lawyers want Q-E to provide full details on how such mistakes happen, then they should have to do the same.
Or perhaps they should just both cool their jets. Judge Grewal called this entire affair a "circus" in his last ruling. It's fortunate for both sides that he considers such mistakes unavoidable in a big case.
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Clearly Quinn exposed info badly, but *maybe* only equally negligently as Apple posting the same information. Where I disagree with you is just how bad Samsung's actions were. The judge said he couldn't legally make the call based on the evidence available, not that it didn't happen. The Samsung exec "admitted" he had the info by crowing about it to a third party in negotiations for Samsung's benefit. This was not an innocent mistake.
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If you can't have an original thought then why do you keep hitting the reply button over and over?
Unfortunately only Quinn got sanctioned where the really bad behavior was on the Samsung exec's part.
So I've read this comment three times now and I still don't understand it.