Samsung Escalates Patent Arms Race with Apple in Europe
One of the latest signs that there's an escalating "patent arms race" between Apple and Samsung is that Samsung set a record in 2013 by filing more than 10 times as many European patents as their rival Apple. They were the number one patent filer in Europe with 2,800 patent applications. Google wasn't far behind with 2,200 applications whereas Apple dropped down to being number 50 on the top 100 patent filers in 2013.
According to the Financial Times, the big increase in the number of Samsung's patent applications came in the same year that it lost a high-profile court case in the US where the judge initially awarded $1.05bn in damages to Apple. In Europe, applications typically take three to five years to be approved.
A partner specializing in intellectual property at a London-based law firm noted that "Samsung is obviously trying hard to bolster their portfolio to put themselves in a better position with regards to licensing discussions."
The Financial Times quotes Mueller of FOSS Patents as stating that "In the US the idea is that everything under the sun made by man should be patentable. That is not the approach in Europe, where only patents on technical innovations in an engineering sense will be granted."
In the context of the Financial Times report about Apple not filing as many patents as Samsung in Europe, Florian Mueller's sarcasm is uncharacteristic, considering that he enjoys catering to the Apple community States side. In context, his commentary appears to be basically stating that Apple files less patents than Samsung in Europe because their inventions aren't "technical innovations" in an engineering sense. That's interesting.
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