A couple of weeks ago, in a refreshing development to the ongoing patent battles between Apple and other Android manufacturers, Taiwanese giant HTC quietly and brilliantly (pun intended) buried the hatchet and sealed a ten year cross-licensing with Apple.
Samsung, the other biggie, who is currently have a rocking year in terms of sales, despite a set of ongoing patent wars with Apple in various countries, seems to have taken this as an opportunity to gain an edge over its rival. Samsung had filed an appeal with a California court for a copy of Apple’s settlement and patent license agreement with HTC, which is incidentally still under wraps, claiming that the document is relevant to its own legal tangle with Apple.
Turns out that the court has ordered Apple to reveal all details of the legal settlement it has reached with HTC, without delay,  including terms of the 10-year patents licensing agreement. Samsung had strongly contended that the HTC deal covers some of the same patents involved in its own litigation with Apple. Of course, the contents of the settlement would be for legal eyes only, and won’t be made public.
Samsung has also filed an appeal with the said California court to include three newly released Apple products — the iPod Touch 5, the iPad 4 and the iPad mini — to the list of devices that it has originally reported to have infringed on some of its patents.
There has been no official comment  yet from either Apple or HTC on this new development, but it would be interesting to see how things unfold over the next few days.
Via CNBC
