Commission announces tentative antitrust deal with Samsung

Settlement would be a benchmark for resolving global smartphone wars.

The European Commission today (17 October) announced a draft antitrust deal with Samsung, in an effort to calm the patent wars that have raged between the world’s largest smartphone makers and could have seen certain handsets disappear from shop’s shelves.

The tentative deal with the world’s largest smartphone maker would require  the company to give an independent arbitrator final say over the price it charges for certain smartphone patents.

The Commission began investigating Samsung after Apple complained that the Korean company had volunteered its patents for inclusion in industry standards but was now demanding extortionate prices. When Apple refused, Samsung asked courts in Germany, the UK and France to remove certain iPhones and iPads from shops’ shelves.

Apple said that this was an abuse of market power and breached rules that require companies that submit patents for an industry standard to license the patents to anyone on fair and reasonable terms.

Market players now have one month to submit comments to the Commission on the proposed deal. If the Commission is satisfied that the commitments would resolve its concerns, it will make them binding on Samsung.

But any such decision would serve as a benchmark for other disputes in the so-called smartphone wars. The Commission is currently conducting a similar investigation into Google’s Motorola after receiving complaints from Apple and Microsoft. Other complaints filed to the Commission include one by Huawei against Interdigital and one by Google against Mosaid.

In July the US’s Federal Trade Commission imposed similar obligations on Google to resolve an antitrust investigation into the US firm’s search engine and smartphone business.