Apple drags Ericsson to court over high royalty fees for LTE patents

BY Rajesh Pandey

Published 14 Jan 2015

iphone-5-4g-lte

Apple has sued Ericsson over the excess royalties the latter is charging for its LTE wireless technology patents. 

Apple states that it has not infringed on any of the LTE patents from Ericsson, which it does not consider relevant to the mobile network industry. The company argues that Ericsson is asking for royalties as a percentage of the retail price of the smartphone, when it should ideally charge them on the price of the processor that includes the LTE modem.

If the court deems that Apple has infringed on the patents from Ericsson, the latter wants that the court itself assigns a royalty fees that it has to pay to Ericsson.

“We’ve always been willing to pay a fair price to secure the rights to standards essential patents covering technology in our products. Unfortunately, we have not been able to agree with Ericsson on a fair rate for their patents so, as a last resort, we are asking the courts for help,” said Apple spokeswoman Kristin Huguet.

Apple and Ericsson had entered into an agreement over the patents in question soon after the former had launched the original iPhone in 2008.

[Via Reuters]