Apple and Nokia were seeking major sanctions against Samsung for disclosing confidential licensing agreements, but it appears Apple was guilty of the same mistake.
In October last year,
Apple had accused
Samsung of illegally disclosing confidential patent licensing terms with Nokia. However,
Apple has also released the same information publicly while in the process of seeking sanctions against the Korean company, according to
a report in Foss Patents.
In January, the US District Court for the Northern District of California cleared Samsung, but ordered its law firm Quinn Emanuel to pay for Apple and Nokia's efforts because of the disclosure of confidential Apple-Nokia patent licence terms. While Samsung was cleared for not actually using that information in their own negotiations with Nokia, an associate in its law firm had oversight on the documents, which was deemed sanctionable by the court.
While Apple and Nokia were seeking sanctions against Samsung, and Apple has been pursuing this even now, a new development has undermined their chances. Foss Patents reported that Apple actually filed the terms of its Nokia license on a publicly accessible court docket, where it remained for four months. It was removed only after Samsung brought this matter to the court's attention in February.
Four months of legal wrangling after that, the matter was brought up by Samsung in Thursday's motion. As per the report, Samsung writes:
"Apple's and Nokia's scorched-earth approach to Samsung's inadvertent disclosure, and the amount of the concomitant fees Apple and Nokia incurred in pursuing those efforts, must be juxtaposed against the fact that Apple had simultaneously posted (and Nokia neglected to notice) this information on the Internet for all the world to see. The fee award should be reduced accordingly."
The report speculates that this could, and should, reduce the fee award. What should have been a legal victory seems to have been bungled into a disaster for Apple.