Samsung will be able to look at the settlement between Apple and HTC. Samsung will reportedly use the content of the settlement to determine if they need to halt sales of any of their products after their billion-dollar loss to Apple in a US court in August. Apple had previously sought to keep the specific dollar amount of its settlement with HTC private while providing the rest of the settlement terms for Samsung to view, though Samsung didn’t find this sufficient. Bryan Bishop of The Verge reports:
Apple's attorneys had previously agreed to share a version of the agreement that redacted the financial terms of the settlement; in a hearing today Samsung argued that the fees HTC is paying Apple indicate how much consumer demand there is for those features covered by the patents. While Judge Grewal did write that he was "more than a little skeptical" of Samsung's argument, he nevertheless ordered Apple to turn over the document.
Samsung feels that if Apple is licensing patents to HTC, then Apple is fine with someone using the intellectual property covered by those patents as long as they are paid for its use. Since Apple will be recieving a settlement from Samsung based on August’s verdict, Samsung believes that an injunction is unjustified. Whether this will be enough to satisfy the court is up for debate, because licensing agreements typically involve a contract to use intellectual property, and while Samsung will indeed pay Apple a large sum of money, they still used the intellectual property without permission in the eyes of the law, having made no contract with Apple on the use of their intellectual property. The hearing for a possible injunction against Samsung’s products will being on December 6th.
Source: The Verge
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