Back during the summer the newest legal battles involving Samsung started to arise, as Microsoft began the process to take Samsung to court over the issue of not paying royalty fees to the company due to licensing. Samsung proclaimed that they didn’t owe any money for licensing fees over those patents that Microsoft owned which Microsoft felt was not OK. The original filing of the lawsuit appeared in early 2014, as Microsoft was seeking a payment for the nearly $6.9 million in interest on those royalties that Samsung apparently still hadn’t paid, as they had allegedly stopped paying Microsoft for licensing fees since September of last year. The interest was part of a massive $1 Billion collaboration deal between Samsung and Microsoft as part of Samsung’s manufacturing Windows phones, and those court battles are starting to gain momentum as both Samsung and Microsoft have filed counterclaims to each others original filings on the lawsuit.
Today, Reuters reports that Samsung has recently filed a counterclaim basically asking the court for a declaration to terminate the agreement between them and Microsoft over licensing fees and the alleged interest amount that is still owed. Samsung’s argument is that once Microsoft had acquired Nokia’s hardware business and a large number of their patents, they became a direct competitor to Samsung in the hardware sector, something that wasn’t previously the case since Microsoft wasn’t actually manufacturing their own hardware. Because of the Nokia acquisition, Samsung claims that continuing to share sensitive information with Microsoft as part of the original agreement would have created issues with U.S. anti-trust laws and Samsung is weary of any continuity of the agreement for fear of being slapped with collusion charges.
Microsoft has also filed their own counterclaim with an amended complaint of the original suit filing, stating that regardless of their acquiring Nokia’s hardware division, Samsung should now be allowed to “unilaterally kill” the patent-licensing agreement between the two of them. Gaining the ability and rights from the courts decision to stop the agreement if they so chose could gain Samsung more authority in the matter between them and Microsoft and allow for them to renegotiate terms. Microsoft states however that despite Samsung’s arguments, they feel they have a really strong case.
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