Well Samsung asked to see the full agreement between Apple and HTC from a few weeks ago, and they are about to get it. Today the court said that HTC must hand over the agreement to Samsung’s Lawyers, which means they’ll get to see the full agreement between the two companies. This request was brought up as part of the trial that Samsung and Apple had this past summer where the jury found Samsung to be guilty and to pay Apple over $1 billion.
Due to the highly sensitive material in this agreement, the agreement will be for “attorney’s eyes only” which is plenty understandable. This means that any references to it in the record will be filed under seal and redacted from any publicly released documents. So that means we won’t find out what HTC is paying Apple to use their patents and all the little terms and conditions in it.
As far as a win for Samsung, this isn’t a win against Apple but a win against HTC. Since the Taiwanese manufacturer made the filing that explicitly requested the financial terms of the agreement be redacted, and those terms would indeed be lost if it’s viewed by Samsung.
Its pretty unlikely that this will help Samsung in it’s argument against Apple for a permanent injunction against several of their devices, including the Galaxy S3. It appears that the non-fiscal terms are going to be far more important in this agreement between Apple and HTC. But it’s very likely that Samsung’s attorneys would do a little “courtroom math” in order to show the judgement against Samsung is basically equivalent to the value of such a licensing arrangement. Due to the fact that Apple settled, it would mess with the requisite of “irreparable harm” for a permanent injunction against Samsung devices.
So looks like we may never learn the full details of the agreement between Apple and HTC, but it sure would be nice to know what the agreement is in terms and how much HTC has to pay Apple per device sold that is using Apple’s patents. Wouldn’t you like to know?