Context: A little over a year ago, research and licensing firm InterDigital annonced an arbitration agreement with Samsung Electronics, thereby avoiding litigation (January 3, 2023 press release) and renewing a license agreement with some of the terms yet to be determined. InterDigital holds patents covering cellular technologies such as 5G, but also WiFi, video codec and digital TV patents.
What’s new: Today (January 16, 2024), InterDigital announced “a new patent license agreement with Samsung Electronics” that “licenses Samsung’s digital TVs and computer display monitors under InterDigital’s joint licensing program with Sony and includes licenses to key technologies including ATSC 3.0, as well as licenses under InterDigital’s patents including HEVC, VVC and Wi-Fi” (January 16, 2024 press release).
Direct impact: Today’s announcement stands in the tradition of last year’s in terms of InterDigital and Samsung now typically figuring out solutions that obviate the need for enforcement actions. The two parties could soon celebrate (if they so wanted) 10 litigation-free years as the previous dispute was settled in mid 2014. Today’s announcement concerns the equivalent of a two-company patent pool (InterDigital and Sony, with the former being the active manager) and must be viewed as separate, however, from the subject matter of the arbitration agreement that relates to Samsung’s smartphones and other mobile computing devices.
Wider ramifications: Many such agreements fall into place without any announcement (and if announcements are made, they often get little or no attention), while litigation always becomes known. By and large, standard-essential patent (SEP) licensing is going smoothly, as amicably-concluded license agreements far outnumber the situations in which serious friction arises.
There isn’t anything to add to the fray4 summary above as no terms were disclosed, with the sole exception that one year after last year’s arbitration agreement an announcement of the arbitration process having concluded could come anytime, unless the parties decided not to make any further announcement after they said they were going to have the terms of the new license agreement for mobile devices determined by an arbitration panel.