Apple has won an invalidation of 3G SEP of Samsung in Germany. This serves as a huge win for Apple, which definitely damaged the relationship between the two companies further. Earlier last week, Apple had lost the slide-to-unlock patent against Google's Motorola, and it was a huge blow to Apple. However, I would think that Apple would prefer this trade-off, being able to damage Samsung, who is his main competitor, and suffer a defeat from Google, than to have the status quo. The german court has ruled to invalidate in its entirety, the German part of Samsung's EP1005726 on a "turbo encoding/decoding device and method for processing frame data according to QoS", which is a patent Samsung had declared to be essential to 3G wireless standard.
This defeat could also be viewed as a consequence for Samsung being too greedy. Previously, it had withdrawn all its SEP-based injunction against Apple, but still continued to sue it for damages. This outcome might not have happened if the relationship between Apple and Samsung was better.
It seems like invalidation of patents, although sounding like a huge and uncommon issue, is indeed common. This makes me wonder about the reliability in the process of applying for patents. If most cases can be invalidated, why should it even be issued initially? Does this not reflect bad on the issuing agency that they were negligent on their part previously?
I also thought that invalidation of patents is uncommon. However, it actually is pretty common. I don't have complete answers to your questions, but I guess one reason why patents can be invalidated over time is because patent laws change. Also, different countries have different patent laws, so it's possible for a company's patent to be valid in one country and not in the other, as we saw for the slide to unlock patent for Apple.
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