Monday, September 8, 2014

Breaking News: Japan's IP High Court Publishes English-Language Translations of Its Samsung v. Apple FRAND Judgments

On May 16, 2014, a Grand Panel of Japan's IP High Court affirmed a lower court ruling that Samsung engaged in an abuse of right in its negotiations with Apple over the licensing of a FRAND-encumbered standard-essential patent and therefore was not entitled to a preliminary injunction.  The High Court reversed the lower court's decision, however, that Samsung's abuse of right also deprived it of the ability to recover damages, and awarded  Samsung ¥ 9,950,000.  (For previous coverage on this blog, see here and here.  Technically, there were three related lower court rulings and three IP High Court judgments.)  The text of the IP High Court's judgments has been available, in Japanese, on the High Court's website for some time.  As promised, the court has now published the long-awaited English-language translations of its summaries of its judgments (here, here, and here); the full text of its judgments (here, here, and here); and the lower ruling rulings (here, here and here).  I haven't made my way through all of this material yet--there's quite a lot of it--but I probably will have something to say about it in due time.  In the meantime, readers who want to read the materials for themselves can download them from the links above. 

Also of interest is this recently-published article on the case by Takanori Abe, in Managing IP.

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