Judge Rules That Details of the Apple HTC Deal Should Be Public, But Not Pricing

Posted December 4, 2012 at 4:34pm by iClarified | Please help us and submit a translation by clicking here | 3570 views

U.S. District Court Judge Lucy Koh has ruled that details of the patent settlement agreement between HTC and Apple must be made public save for pricing and royalty terms, reports CNET.

"This Court has repeatedly explained that only the pricing and royalty terms of license agreements may be sealed," Koh wrote in a ruling. "There are compelling reasons to seal pricing and royalty terms, as they may place the parties to the agreement at a disadvantage in future negotiations, but there is nothing in the remainder of the agreement that presents a sufficient risk of competitive harm to justify keeping it from the public."

Thus it appears we will soon know which patents were part of the agreement.

"The Court has just explained that the only sealable terms of the license agreement are the payment and royalty terms. Thus, the list of patents covered by the agreement does not meet the 'compelling reasons' standard," Koh wrote.

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Comments (2)

Nick - December 4, 2012 at 4:44pm

I don't quite understand, but why do they have to make details of their agreement public? Is it a law or something because they're a publicly traded company? Or is this just the judges opinion on it? I'm just curious as to why.

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