When Samsung first received Ericsson's complaint, back in November of 2012, they expected to go into litigation around April 8, 2014. Now, just from looking at the second date, we can see just how delayed these battles can drag out for considering it takes up to a year and a half to even get a court date...
However, Samsung still believes they need more time and have asked the ITC for a 60 day extension on the original court date. They say it is warranted because "of the breadth of [an] outstanding discovery" and Ericsson's inability to drop patents from the claim meaning Samsung needs more time to prepare. Yet, Ericsson has only been asserting 134 claims from 11 different patents versus Samsung's 190 claims. When you look at it, that means there are still 335 that a judge needs to look over just for one case which is a tremendous amount. Another complication is that seven of Ericsson's patents are FRAND which means they need to get information from third parties to demonstrate that they aren't breaking any laws.
Even though the trial was supposed to originally happen in August 2013 and has now been pushed back to April 2014 and is now being pushed back even farther to June 2014 shows just how massive and complicated this case is and will be when the judge finally starts making decisions. I feel bad for the judge reviewing this case because he or she will be doing a ton of meticulous work.
I wonder if the ITC has ever pushed back a case due to the judge not having enough time to review the complexity of the claims? I imagine that this would be a problem that less experienced judges would face, given that a judge could order the litigating parties to reduce their patent claims to single digits to narrow the scope of the case.
ReplyDeleteVery interesting article. I wrote about a similar issue. I wonder if that 2 months will actually affect Samsung and also like Christopher said if the ITC has ever pushed back a case. This case has taken a long time and it is kind of getting ridiculous. I wonder if this case will get delayed again.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if the 2 months will even make a difference. If it was a big enough issue for them to even do that, then I'm unsure if they'll fix it by then.
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