The head of Interdigital, a mobile technology patent company, on Tuesday tried to raise pressure on Apple to reach a broad licensing deal after announcing an agreement with Samsung valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
News of the Samsung accord came 10 days before a legal showdown at the US International Trade Commission that could have resulted in the South Korean company being barred from importing some of its handsets into the US.
The deal brought a degree of vindication for Interdigital, which claims more than 20,000 patents and patent applications covering a range of 3G and 4G mobile technologies. Its lawsuits against companies such as Samsung, Huawei and Nokia have drawn accusations that it acts like a patent troll, though the company denies the charges.
The agreement with Samsung, coming nearly 18 months after Interdigital brought a complaint before the ITC, should encourage Apple to reach a similar, broad-reaching accord, said William Merritt, the patent company’s chief executive.
“They can see the Samsung agreement, they can observe our successes in litigation,” he said. “Hopefully, these two things we can point to will lead to a successful resolution.”
Apple did not immediately return a request for comment. The iPhone maker has not been on the receiving end of any lawsuits from Interdigital, and until now it has only had a patent agreement with the company covering a very narrow range of technology.
Interdigital has had mixed success at the ITC with its campaign to get handset makers to pay up. Late last year, the court rejected a claim against Huawei, Nokia and ZTE over patents covering older mobile technologies.
The value of the Samsung accord – a five-year licence for a fixed amount, running to the end of 2017 – was not disclosed. However, Interdigital also raised its short-term revenue guidance on Tuesday, pointing to a total increase in its expected revenue by the end of 2017 of nearly $500m. Company executives said that the Samsung deal was the largest factor in this increase, though licenses with other companies also accounted for some of the extra revenue.
A campaign in Washington to crack down on patent trolls ended in failure last month after the US senate abandoned a bill to deal with claimed legal abuses by patent licensing firms. The proposed law stirred up a backlash from companies in industries such as pharmaceuticals, which rely heavily on patent rights.
“Ultimately, the patent debate is not a name-calling exercise, that’s a waste of time,” Mr Merritt said. “It’s really about behaviour. When you send 1,000 letters to coffee shops, that’s what we don’t want.”