Today the ITC issued a final ruling, which found that the iPhone 3GS, iPad 3G and iPad 2 3G models have infringed Samsung’s U.S. Patent No. 7,706,348 – “Apparatus and method for encoding/decoding transport format combination indicator in CDMA mobile communication system.
This is in spite of this specific patent being declared standard essential UMTS wireless technology.
According to Mueller from FossPatent:
This decision is a major surprise. Observers expected an infringement finding with respect to the ‘348 patent after the ITC asked the parties and third-party stakeholders questions relating to this scenario (several months after a first list of partly FRAND-related questions), and prior to that I had written in my analysis of the preliminary ruling by an Administrative Law Judge that this patent was Samsung’s best shot in this case. But I can’t believe that the ITC has completely thrown out Apple’s FRAND defense (“[t]he Commission has determined that Samsung’s FRAND declarations do not preclude [import bans]”), taking a position that is fundamentally inconsistent not only with how U.S. federal courts have recently adjudged SEP-based injunction requests (1, 2) but also with opinions expressed by antitrust regulators and, especially, U.S. lawmakers.
