After “paid HTC Bashing”, “Blatant copying” this will the next big evidence of Samsung’s business ethics. So, during a recent Nokia-Samsung patent deal discussion, Nokia was told by one of the Samsung exec that he knows all the detail about Nokia-Apple patent deal. Now, the issue is, this information was supposed to be super confidential and Apple has produced it in court during the Samsung-Apple litigation meant to be used only by its outside counsel (marked as “Highly Confidential — Attorneys’ Eyes Only”).
Licensing executives from Samsung and Nokia held a meeting on June 4, 2013 to discuss a patent license deal between these parties. In that meeting, a Samsung exec, Dr. Seungho Ahn, “informed Nokia that the terms of the Apple-Nokia license were known to him” and according to a declaration from Nokia’s Chief Intellectual Property Officer, Paul Melin, “stated that Apple had produced the Apple-Nokia license in its litigation with Samsung, and that Samsung’s outside counsel had provided his team with the terms of the Apple-Nokia license”. The Melin declaration furthermore says that “to prove to Nokia that he knew the confidential terms of the Apple-Nokia license, Dr. Ahn recited the terms of the license, and even went so far as to tell Nokia that ‘all information leaks.'”
The court which is dealing with this has ordered a probe and it already knows a lot about what may have happened. Samsung is in trouble!!
Judge Grewal writes “[t]here is reason to believe the rule [that confidential information made available only to outside counsel won’t be disclosed to the party itself] has been breached in the present case”. But due to the current lack of information, the judge can’t say yet “[w]hether the actions of Samsung and its counsel are worthy of sanctions, and what those sanctions might be”.
Thanks Tom for the Tip. Cheers!!
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