The new actions, which include a second complaint to the U.S. International Trade Commission and a federal suit in Southern California, come on top of existing legal actions that date back to last year.

“We began actions against HTC in 2012 to end the unauthorized use of our proprietary innovations and technologies,” Nokia said. “Since then, despite the German courts confirming infringements of Nokia patents in HTC products, HTC has shown no intention to end its practices; instead it has tried to shift responsibility to its suppliers. We have therefore taken these further steps to hold HTC accountable for its actions.”

An HTC representative was not immediately available for comment.

Overall, Nokia has asserted 50 patents in its various complaints around the world, including nine that were added through the new actions.

Nokia’s litigation with HTC is just one of many patent disputes in the mobile world, a legal landscape that includes battles between Samsung and Apple, and between Microsoft and Google’s Motorola unit.

There have been some settlements in the industry of late, including a deal between HTC and Apple that was announced in November, and a number of licensing deals between Microsoft and various Android sellers.

Update: HTC said it will take a look at the latest legal papers.

“Upon receiving the official document, HTC is to consider all legal options to protect our rights,” the company said in a statement.

Facebook’s top lawyer Ted Ullyot is leaving the social networking giant, apparently to take some time off.

Facebook disclosed the departure today. Ullyot, 45, will be officially gone in July; the search for his replacement will include internal and external candidates.

As general counsel, Ullyot has presided over a myriad of new, unusual and sometimes controversial legal issues, including managing high-stakes and complex litigation that ranged from Facebook’s battle with the Winklevoss twins, to a patent fight with Yahoo to investor disgruntlement around its initial public offering.

And, of course, over privacy issues. In many ways, given the Silicon Valley company’s pioneering role in social networking, Ullyot has had to work in a relatively undiscovered landscape, which has also attracted a great deal of scrutiny from consumers, regulators and investors.

He started in the fall of 2008, and has managed all the legal aspects of the company and built up the team from 10 when Facebook was a startup to more than 70 as a public company. In that time, Facebook has grown from 500 people to 5,000 and from 100 million to over one billion active users.

It has certainly been a ride for him, from beating back the Winklevii over their allegations related to the founding of Facebook to settling the patent dispute with Yahoo to handling the Federal Trade Commission investigation and more.

It is not clear what he will do next, but sources said he does not have another job lined up as of yet.

Germany’s Federal Patent Court — the fantastically named Bundespatentgericht — this week ruled in Apple’s favor in yet another of the pair’s patent disputes. This one involved a mobile technology that Samsung considers essential to the 3G wireless standard, something described as “turbo encoding/decoding device and method for processing frame data according to QoS.” The South Korean company had been seeking injunctions against Apple over this patent. But the Bundespatentgericht declined to grant them, instead invalidating the patent in its entirety.

The Bundespatentgericht didn’t explain the rationale behind the invalidation. But its reasons are likely similar to those of the U.K.’s High Court of Justice, which tossed the same patent last month, arguing that it lacks the priority Samsung claims, and has been rendered invalid by intervening prior art.

Samsung has the option to appeal the Bundespatentgericht’s decision, though it’s not yet clear if it will go that route. A company spokesman says Samsung plans to thoroughly review the decision before taking any further steps. “We will continue to take the measures necessary to protect our intellectual property rights,” he said.

Judge Lucy Koh ordered a new trial to determine damages for certain of the products in the case, a move that affects $450 million of the jury’s $1.05 billion award.

“Because the Court has identified an impermissible legal theory on which the jury based its award, and cannot reasonably calculate the amount of excess while effectuating the intent of the
jury, the Court hereby orders a new trial on damages for the following products: Galaxy Prevail, Gem, Indulge, Infuse 4G, Galaxy SII AT&T, Captivate, Continuum, Droid Charge, Epic 4G, Exhibit 4G, Galaxy Tab, Nexus S 4G, Replenish, and Transform,” Koh wrote in her ruling.

The move means that, unless a settlement is reached, a new trial will have to be held to figure out what Samsung owes Apple for infringement of those products, as opposed to the $450 million awarded by the initial jury in the case. The judge did not throw out the ruling those products infringed, but rather disagreed with how the jury calculated the amount of damages.

Koh left intact the ruling and damages on 14 other products, upholding nearly $600 million in damages.

An Apple representative declined to comment. A Samsung representative was not immediately available for comment.

Update: In a statement, Samsung praised Koh’s move to toss out part of the verdict.

“Samsung intends to seek further review as to the remaining award,” the company said. “We are also pleased that the court earlier found that Samsung had not acted willfully, denied Apple’s request for a permanent injunction, and denied Apple’s motion for increased damages.”

Here’s the full ruling:

Judge Koh Orders New Trial for Some Damages in Apple-Samsung by Ina Turpen Fried

In many cases, discovery relating to damages and injunctive relief is given short shrift. Companies may balk at the cost of market studies or surveys that analyze the value that the patented invention provides to the accused products, deeming them unnecessary. But the Federal Circuit’s rulings show that remedy-related discovery will become increasingly important — especially where the patented invention may drive demand for the accused products. If this link cannot be clearly shown, damages may be reduced and injunctive relief forfeited. Settlement amounts may be driven down, and cases may be resolved more quickly. These decisions have likely cost the holders of relatively insignificant or unimportant patents considerable leverage in future licensing negotiations and litigation.

Both LaserDynamics and Apple-Samsung are linked by a common theme — the high burden being placed by the Federal Circuit on patent holders to demonstrate that the remedies they seek are commensurate with the value of their inventions. This is especially true in litigation involving high-technology, multi-component products such as mobile devices. The Court’s rulings may begin to assuage the concerns of regulators, commentators, and industry participants about excessive jury verdicts, increased costs due to royalty stacking, patent hold-up and the potential improper enforcement of standard-essential patents in litigation. The Federal Circuit will likely continue to develop this area of case law further in the next year.

LaserDynamics v. Quanta — “Damages Control”

The LaserDynamics case involved a non-practicing entity that owned a patent covering a method of automatically recognizing discs in optical disc drives. Quanta sold laptop computers containing drives alleged to use the patented method. Even though the patent covered only a portion of the disc drives, LaserDynamics sought damages based on a percentage of the selling price of each Quanta laptop. The jury awarded LaserDynamics damages of $52M, based on a two percent royalty on each laptop. But the district court overturned the jury’s verdict, finding that using the entire laptop sale price as a royalty base was improper. LaserDynamics appealed to the Federal Circuit.

The Federal Circuit agreed with the district court, explaining that royalties should typically be based on the “smallest salable patent-practicing unit” — in this case, the optical disc drives. The Court expressed concern that juries not overcompensate the patent holder by awarding damages based on features that are not covered by the patent. By basing damages on the smallest salable patent-practicing unit, that risk is reduced — because the amount and value of unpatented features will be relatively small. Limiting the royalty base to the smallest salable unit thus provides some “damage control” to damages.

According to the Court, the only way the entire product could be used as the royalty base for damages was if the patented feature created the demand for the entire product itself. Simply because the patent might cover a feature that consumers expect or would like a product to have does not mean that damages may be based on the entire product’s price — even if the patented feature is valuable, important, or essential to the use of the product.

The LaserDynamics decision’s damage control may significantly decrease uncertainty in patent damages, especially for cases involving mobile devices and similar multicomponent products. With the many features found in devices like smartphones, no single feature may actually form the basis for demand for the smartphone itself. In the future, significant damages awards may be limited to those truly valuable patents that actually drive demand for products.

Apple v. Samsung — Limiting Injunctive Relief for Multi-component Devices

The issue in Apple v. Samsung involved not money damages, but injunctive relief — the ability to force an infringer to cease infringement. Apple claimed that the Quick Search Box (QSB) feature in Samsung’s Android Galaxy Nexus smartphone infringed its patent covering a “unified search” function. Apple moved for a preliminary injunction, asking the court to ban sales of the Galaxy Nexus phone. The district court granted Apple’s preliminary injunction motion and barred sales of the Galaxy Nexus phones. Samsung appealed to the Federal Circuit.

The Federal Circuit reversed the district court, ruling that Apple was not entitled to a preliminary injunction. The Federal Circuit focused on whether Apple had shown that Samsung’s use of the QSB search feature irreparably harmed Apple — a prerequisite for injunctive relief. The Court held that a patentee must show a “causal nexus” between irreparable harm and infringement — that it will be irreparably harmed unless it receives an injunction, and that the harm is caused by the infringement.

Here, although Apple showed that its Siri functionality was important to its own iPhones, Apple failed to show that the accused QSB feature drove customer demand for the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. Therefore, the harm was not caused by the alleged infringement, and the requested remedy did not match the relative importance of the patented feature. Echoing its opinion in LaserDynamics, the Court explained that an injunction is not warranted even where a device without the infringing feature would be less valuable or even inoperable — the feature must be a core component that drives demand for the entire device. The QSB did not drive demand for the Galaxy Nexus, so Apple was not entitled to an injunction.

A Renewed Focus on Remedies

The reasons why remedies for infringement may be overshadowed by the focus on liability are simple. Historically, injunctions were automatically entered upon a finding of patent infringement. Faced (or armed) with an injunction, the parties would often settle, with any damages award being considered as a factor in that settlement amount. Further, damages awards themselves have been unpredictable, with large jury verdicts often getting overturned on appeal. In contrast to the uncertainty of damages, infringement is a more predictable determination that may be resolved even before a jury trial — so litigants typically focus on this more certain target.

But patent law has evolved. Injunctions are no longer automatically entered — patent owners must now show specific harm requiring an injunction and why that harm could not be addressed by damages alone. And the Federal Circuit has recently provided more guidance on damages in patent cases, making these awards more predictable and tied to the value of the patented invention. LaserDynamics and Apple-Samsung warn litigants to place a renewed focus on patent infringement remedies.

Recent Developments

In fact, their effects are already being felt in a variety of pending cases. For example, in the high-profile district court litigation between Apple and Samsung, the jury found that Samsung infringed several of Apple’s user interface and design patents — yet Judge Lucy Koh held that because Apple failed to link Samsung’s infringement of Apple’s patents to the customer demand for Samsung’s accused products, Apple was not entitled to a permanent injunction.

Apple has now asked the full cohort of Federal Circuit judges to review Judge Koh’s decision, as well as reconsider its denial of the preliminary injunction in Apple v. Samsung. If the Federal Circuit takes these cases up in an en banc hearing, the focus will likely be on the “causal nexus” requirement. This appeal warrants watching, as it will have wide implications for future patent cases.

¹ 694 F.3d 51 (Fed. Cir. 2012).

² 695 F.3d 1370 (Fed. Cir. 2012).

David Long is a Member in the Intellectual Property and Litigation practice groups at Dow Lohnes with over twenty-five years experience in telecommunications. Matt Rizzolo is an Associate in Dow Lohnes’s Litigation practice group and concentrates his practice on intellectual property matters, with a specific focus on patent litigation.

Judge Lucy Koh said that the jury’s $1 billion verdict was supported by the evidence, adding that “the trial was fairly conducted, with uniform time limits and rules of evidence applied to both sides.”

“A new trial,” Koh wrote in the ruling, “would be contrary to the interests of justice.”

Both sides are likely to appeal various parts of the verdict, with some appeals in the case already filed.

For those who want to read the whole ruling, The Verge has posted a PDF.

Now, not a week later, the first hard numbers from the deal are emerging. According to a recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, RIM’s first payment to Nokia — the one made up front — totaled in excess of $50 million.

“On December 21, 2012, Nokia and RIM announced that they have entered into a new patent license agreement,” RIM explained in a 6-K filing. “The agreement will result in the settlement of all patent litigation between the companies and Nokia’s dismissal of all pending actions in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Germany. The financial structure of the agreement includes a lump sum EUR50m (approximately $65m) one-time payment, which has been recorded in the Company’s consolidated statement of operations in the third quarter of fiscal 2013.”

The 6-K doesn’t specify what sort of arrangement the companies have made with regard to ongoing royalty payments. But it’s conceivable that their yearly total could run nearly as high as this first upfront payment, particularly if the agreed-upon royalty rate falls in the $2- to $5-per-handset range that some analysts expect.

For its part, Apple wants injunctions on various Samsung products as well as to see the jury’s billion-dollar verdict raised by a few hundred million dollars. Samsung wants the damage award reduced and is also seeking a new trial because of, among other things, what it alleges was juror misconduct.

We’ll have live coverage from the hearing, which is due to start around 1:30 pm PT.

In the meantime, here’s our preview of what to watch for as well as a look at the Apple-HTC settlement agreement, a redacted version of which was made public on Thursday as part of Samsung’s case.

1:08 pm: We’re in and seated. It’s pretty packed here in the main courtroom and plenty more people are being routed to the overflow room.

All of the key trial attorneys for both sides appear to be here. Twenty minutes to showtime. Get your popcorn. We are, of course, not allowed such treats in here.

1:25 pm: HTC has filed documents with the court trying to justify the heavy redactions to its contract with Apple.

Judge Lucy Koh had said such exclusions should be limited to very specific financial terms such as royalty rates.

“Samsung only contends that this agreement is proof that Apple was willing and in fact has entered into license agreements concerning at least some of the patents at issue in this case,” HTC said in the filing. “Hence the terms and details HTC has redacted are irrelevant to this case.”

We’ll see if anyone objects and whether HTC’s arguments fly with Koh, who has been a stickler on such matters.

1:36 pm: Court is now six minutes late in getting started. That’s what, like $10,000 per side in legal fees right there?

1:37 pm: Judge Koh enters the courtroom and the case is called.

1:38 pm: Koh: I have quite a number of questions because there are so many issues and they are so complex.

Originally she had wanted to issue one omnibus order on everything. Now she’s planning to issue orders piecemeal.

1:39 pm: Not all the orders will come this month, Koh says, since she is in the midst of another patent trial.

1:39 pm: Okay. On to Judge Koh’s questions.

First issue is whether one of the Apple patents Samsung was found to have infringed is, in fact, indefinite.

Koh said she is leaning toward siding with Samsung that this specific patent is “indefinite.” The patent in question refers to when one taps to zoom and gets a zoomed-in result that is “substantially centered.”

1:50 pm: Discussion centering at the moment on what would happen if this particular patent were to be found indefinite.

The Samsung products found to infringe this product were found to infringe one or two other patents, so Apple is arguing damages should still stand. Samsung argues a new trial on damages for those products would be needed.

1:56 pm: I believe Samsung just cited a case of a deer versus a bushhog, but I may have misheard.

Ahh. That’s John Deere vs. Bush Hog. Also, that case apparently has nothing to do with Boss Hogg.

As you can tell, things are moving slowly here.

2:00 pm: Next issue is on the damage award for a particular product (didn’t catch which one) where Samsung argues that the jury awarded an unreasonably high damage amount. Koh seems persuaded at least for this case.

The discussion in question is about the Galaxy Prevail. It’s a complicated point related to how damages were calculated — complicated because Apple asked for three different standards to be applied in calculating damages.

Samsung’s lawyer argues that things are muddied because while the jury specified the damage per product, it didn’t say which method of damage assessment it used.

The issue here is that the jury appears to have awarded Apple using the same percentage basis it did on products that were also found to infringe on design patents, which the Prevail was not found to have done.

“They made a mistake on the Prevail,” Samsung’s lawyer said.

2:20 pm: More discussion from Samsung on why the jury’s damage calculations, broadly speaking, were legally incorrect.

2:25 pm: We’re hearing a lot today from a new voice in the trial — Samsung lawyer Kathleen Sullivan, the head of the appellate practice at Quinn Emmanuel. She’s a former dean of the Stanford law school.

Apple, meanwhile, is still mainly being represented by key voices from trial. Most arguments are coming from its lead lawyer, Harold McElhinny of Morrison Foerster.

For more on the players in the case, here’s our definitive insider’s guide from earlier this year.

2:36 pm: On to the next issue, what’s known as “the notice date” — another key question in figuring damages.

Basically, damages are a rate times the number of units shipped over a period of time. The notice date has to do with the length of the period for which Samsung owes damages. One key factor is when Samsung was “on notice” that Apple believed its patents were being infringed.

2:39 pm: Apple is arguing the court doesn’t even need to consider what notice date the jury used and that it can’t be determined from their verdict. Plus, it says it did give notice.

Apple said it told Samsung broadly that it believed the company was copying its patents and designs. Here, it’s making the case it didn’t have to enumerate each patent it believed was being infringed in order to have provided notice.

2:42 pm: Koh says she is not persuaded the law doesn’t require notice of specific patent infringement.

“I don’t want to be avant garde” on this, Koh said.

McElhinny argues that the damage verdict can be sustained even if judge finds Apple should have given notice. (Only certain claims require notice.)

Apple did notify Samsung earlier of the ’381 patent specifically, but some of the other patents on which it charged infringement weren’t specifically enumerated in its early discussions with Samsung.

The time period in question for a lot of this is from when Apple first met with Samsung about August 2010 and when the lawsuit was first filed.

Koh says that clearly Samsung was on notice after the lawsuit was filed.

Things are getting bogged down with the specter raised of needing more paperwork from both sides on potential impact of her decisions.

“I was hoping to send you on your merry way to the Federal Circuit,” Koh said.

2:50 pm: Samsung argues that for 11 phones found to infringe on one or more design patents, $600 million in damages should be reduced to about $17 million due to changing calculation of damages and time period.

For five patents found to infringe one or more design patents and dilute trade dress, Samsung argues $381 million in damages should be reduced to about $4.5 million.

2:55 pm: Discussion shifting to ’915 utility patent. Both sides agree, Koh said, that there was some inconsistency in jury’s verdict. There’s evidence to go either way on these products, Koh said.

3:00 pm: Samsung attorney Charles Verhoeven is arguing that Apple performed a necessary element-by-element analysis for only one phone on each utility patent accused of infringement. To manage the clock, Verhoeven said, Apple just went point by point with one accused product and then asked its expert if the other phones also similarly infringed.

“That doesn’t present us an (adequate) opportunity to challenge him,” Verhoeven said. Nor, he argues, did the jury have enough information. Hence, he argues, the inconsistency in the verdict.

3:02 pm: McElhinny is now citing one of his favorite cases, the “LA Nuthouse” case. The question at issue is not whether it is inconsistent, but irreconcilably inconsistent.

Apparently that’s Tex-Goober vs. Los Angeles Nut House. (Loving these case citations.)

3:06 pm: Okay, on to some of Apple’s motions, including a request for additional damages. This one apparently relates to the Junker case. Aaron Sorkin couldn’t come up with better case names.

Here’s more on that case.

Samsung says Apple’s request of $131 million in post-verdict supplemental damages is unprecedented and such a precedent shouldn’t be set here.

Apple is arguing why it deserves supplemental damages. Several products found to infringe are still being sold. Apple says the only other remedy would be to file another lawsuit, something its lawyer says he knows Koh does not want.

“I don’t even want the ones that I have,” Koh quipped.

3:22 pm: We still haven’t gotten to a key issue yet to be argued today — whether there should be an injunction on any Samsung products.

Now up, ahead of a 3:30 break, are some of Samsung’s post-trial motions. This could be where Samsung’s juror misconduct claim will come up. First, though, we’re discussing which of the verdict’s damage findings can even be raised due to willful infringement.

3:25 pm: By the way, the first line in that LA Nuthouse case cited earlier is priceless.

“This is an appeal by a nut house in a lawsuit over peanuts,” the court wrote in its findings.

3:27 pm: Meanwhile, back in live court, Samsung argues that only $101 million of the jury’s verdict could possibly be a baseline for willful infringement and subject to enhancement, and really, Sullivan said, it should just be $10 million that could be enhanced.

Apple is seeking several hundred million dollars in enhanced damages.

Sullivan also argues that Samsung shouldn’t be found willful in any case, saying that the company had a reasonable belief that it was not infringing.

3:45 pm: Mercifully, we just got a 15-minute break. Should be back any minute.

3:53 pm: Back from break, Apple getting its couple minutes to make its case on the “willfulness” of Samsung’s infringement.

McElhinny is citing cases, but they don’t have funny names.

McElhinny on Samsung’s willfulness: “There has never been a case in which the evidence was so strong.”

Naturally, Apple also thinks that way more of the damages can be enhanced than Samsung’s $101 million figure.

4:00 pm: Now the talk is turning to the issue of potential juror misconduct for the foreman not mentioning his past lawsuit with Seagate.

“I think that issue is fully briefed,” Koh said, not hearing the full argument.

4:01 pm: On to injunctions — Koh asks regarding the trade dress that Apple is no longer using, how would Apple be harmed if Samsung uses it?

Apple’s lawyer argues that if Chevy came out with a car like the ’67 Mustang, Ford would it be harmed even if it was no longer making that car. In legal terms, he calls it “residual goodwill.”

In this case, the trade dress in question is related to the iPhone 3G or 3GS. Apple says that its products are recognizably Apple products and that could be harmed if Samsung is allowed to sell infringing devices.

Apple is arguing there is an “onslaught” of infringing Samsung devices.

“They got that leg in the market through the Galaxy line,” Apple’s lawyer said.

Asked why the court should issue an injunction on products no longer being sold, Apple says it would prevent the sale not only of those products but also new ones that employ similar infringing features.

She turns to Samsung, but also shows signs of fatigue with the pace of discussion. “I’d like to finish before 2013,” Koh said.

4:09 pm: Sullivan says the injunctions will create a hardship for Samsung as it would create fear among retailers.

“That’s where we could locate our harm,” Sullivan said, noting that Apple can’t suffer harm from products that aren’t shipping or from trade dress it no longer uses.

4:10 pm: Samsung says there are about 77,000 Galaxy S II devices in the hands of retailers. The S II is the highest-volume product still shipping in the case.

4:14 pm: Last issue is a technical one regarding some of the Samsung patents that Apple was accused of infringing.

The jury found Apple didn’t infringe, but Apple also wants the judge to declare that the patents in question should be declared unenforceable going forward.

Koh seemed to feel the question was moot, but didn’t issue a ruling and did ask some factual questions of both sides related to the issue in case she does decide she has to consider Apple’s request.

4:24 pm: Continued disagreement on the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin.

4:25 pm: Apple outside lawyer Bill Lee labels as “fiddling and diddling” what Samsung did before various standard-setting bodies.

4:27 pm: Koh indicates that since even Apple agrees she has discretion not to decide the matter, she probably won’t since the jury found Apple didn’t infringe Samsung patents.

(Jingle of an Apple text message heard in courtroom — first digital sound today.)

Lots of talk over the last 15 minutes about equitable estoppel. I think it would be equitable if all this talk estoppel-ed soon.

4:36 pm: Koh asks lawyers: When is this case going to resolve? In all seriousness.

McElhinny says the timetable is the same as what he said when he first met Koh in 2010 — it won’t be resolved until the law is resolved and enforced.

The area of remedies has yet to be settled, he said.

“They make the (decision) every day how close they are going to get to the line,” McElhinny said. They have placed a bet — successfully so far — on infringing, he said, and the role of the court is to set a line on enforcement.

Even the billion-dollar verdict isn’t enough of a deterrent, he said. “It is the going-forward conduct.”

Samsung’s Verhoeven: I’m not going to go on and on and give a big speech. That said, he says Apple is engaging in a thermonuclear war, seeking to battle in the courthouse rather than the marketplace.

As for settlement talks: “We are willing,” Verhoeven said. “The ball is in their court.”

Samsung has seemed to indicate otherwise.

“I’ve said this all along,” Koh said. “I think it is time for global peace.”

Koh said she will issue orders on the questions and set things up for the appeal, but indicated a settlement would be better.

“It would be good for consumers, it would be good for the industry and I think it would be good for the parties.”

4:44 pm: John Quinn speaks for the first time today, asking to be heard about Velvin Hogan, the jury foreman. Koh had said she was fully briefed on the matter, but agrees to give Quinn a few moments. (I originally mistyped as Tom Quinn.)

The always energetic Quinn is passionately making the case that Hogan “failed to give key information.”

“He was dishonest,” Quinn said. “He was deliberately dishonest.”

Quinn said Seagate and Samsung have key financial ties, and Hogan had a past lawsuit with Seagate.

“He did not disclose that,” Quinn said.

Quinn is saying a juror who is dishonest in order to get on the case is by definition not indifferent and therefore not a suitable juror.

4:54 pm: Quinn wants a hearing to have Hogan quizzed as well as the other jurors brought in to see what impact Hogan had.

Bill Lee rises for Apple to respond.

“Very briefly,” Koh said, before he even speaks.

Lee says that Samsung has not proved that Hogan was dishonest or lied.

Quinn’s rebuttal: This is a juror that had an agenda. It’s unfortunate he got on a jury.

Now McElhinny rises to defend Hogan. He’s waxing poetic about the jurors asking Koh not only to rule against Samsung but to vindicate Hogan and declare it as an “unprofessional motion.”

Koh thanks everyone for their patience today. “I will try to get these orders out as quickly as I can.” And we are adjourned.

Now, thanks to Apple’s dispute with Samsung, the public will learn at least a little more.

According to the document, both sides are getting a nonexclusive, nontransferrable and non-sublicensable license to certain of the other’s patents. Apple also agrees not to sue HTC over certain covered products, though the specific products are redacted.

The agreement also appears to exclude any of Apple’s design patents and nine specified HTC patents as well as coverage for any products that are defined as cloning an Apple product. (An arbitration process is outlined should Apple feel that HTC has released a “cloned” product.)

Samsung has just entered a redacted version of the agreement into the public record, presumably in an effort to argue that the deal indicates that Apple doesn’t need an injunction against Samsung products in order to be properly compensated for any patent infringement.

There’s an awful lot of black ink covering far more than just the royalty rates that HTC must pay Apple. That said, there’s 140 pages worth of text so there are bound to be some useful tidbits that managed to avoid being Sharpie-d out of view.

For instance, the document includes the agreement by both parties to keep things quiet, even going so far as to include the only press release to be issued by the parties.

Below is a PDF of the black ink-soaked settlement.

Apple-HTC Settlement (Redacted)

Apple versus Samsung Full Coverage

Samsung will be seeking to get a new trial and to have the award reduced, while Apple will be looking to have the damages heightened and to see injunctions imposed against various Samsung products found to infringe Apple products.

While such procedural motions often follow large damage awards, Thursday’s hearing is shaping up to be a doozy. Here are three things in particular worth watching for:

1. Will any of Samsung’s arguments for a new trial catch on?
Samsung is arguing, among other things, that the jury foreman’s failure to mention a past lawsuit amounts to jury misconduct and should be grounds for a new trial.

Even if Judge Lucy Koh rejects Samsung’s motions, the company will also be making many of these arguments in its inevitable appeal.

2. What will happen to the damage award?
Koh could leave the judgment unchanged. She could also reduce it, finding that the jury used the wrong calculations. And she could increase it up to threefold, finding that Samsung’s infringement was willful.

3. Will the judge order a sales ban on any Samsung products?
Apple is seeking permanent injunctions on a variety of Samsung products, probably the most important of which is the Galaxy S II, which is still sold in volume at many carriers. Samsung doesn’t feel any injunctions are warranted. Even if a permanent injunction is granted, Samsung believes it has workarounds that should allow sales of its products to continue.

4. What will be revealed about Apple’s recent pact with HTC?
After getting its outside lawyers a peek at the deal, Samsung has sought to have the document entered into the case. Though Apple and HTC might prefer to keep the document sealed entirely, Judge Koh has indicated that the only parts that can be kept secret are the royalty rates and other pricing terms, but not other issues including the patents that have been licensed.

While it is one of the largest consumer electronics and mobile companies in the world, Korea’s Samsung has a relatively quiet profile in Silicon Valley.

In fact, while it has had a longtime facility in San Jose for two decades, its execs are not well known to many except the top echelons of the tech sector here and Samsung’s interactions with the entrepreneurial culture have been decidedly low key.

No longer, it seems.

Besides a previously announced new 8.5-acre campus in Mountain View for its U.S. research and development center, slated for completion in 2014, sources said the company is close to signing a deal for a prominent venue in downtown Palo Alto that will house a start-up accelerator.

The location that the company is now negotiating is the second floor of the former Borders Books space on University Avenue. The historical property has a splashy movie marquee, since it used to house the Varsity Theatre.

It’s not quite Oppa Gangnam Style, it is a big move for Samsung.

While it is unclear if the new office will focus on making investments in start-ups or incubating its own innovation, sources said it will be aimed at linking Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and other players more closely with Samsung.

Sources said the move is being spearheaded by a relatively new hire by Samsung: David Eun, who became its EVP to lead a new push to create more media offerings in December. Previous to Samsung, Eun has been an exec at both Google and AOL.

Eun is well known in the Valley already, but a new location that will focus Samsung’s digital efforts should raise the company’s profile with the digerati here.

Also on the docket to do that is Samsung’s other new major facility. In September, right in the middle of its high-profile patent trial with Apple, the company announced that Samsung Information Systems America, its U.S. R&D Center, would expand and relocate to a new campus.

“The R&D Center will provide a state-of-the-art campus that can support the current rapid growth in the organization, and also provide the infrastructure to support Samsung’s open innovation and university collaboration activities,” Samsung said in a press release at the time. “Construction is anticipated to start in the second half of 2013 on the company’s two new six-story class-A office buildings totaling approximately 385,000 sq. ft. and two 5-6 story parking structures, with occupancy expected in 2014.”

In other words, Apple: Samsung is now officially in the house in Silicon Valley.

They like her, they really like her.

Wall Street, that is, in regards to new Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, assigning the former Google exec a clear premium.

And whether it is deserved or not yet from a pure performance perspective — we actually won’t know for several quarters ahead — the shares of the Silicon Valley Internet giant over the past three months have gone up 22 percent. The rise has taken place pretty much on the promise that she will finally be the one to deliver what no other Yahoo leader has done.

And that is, besides making the company relevant and innovative again: Getting Yahoo’s stock past $20 a share again.

That’s within striking distance now. Shares are at $18.40 today, close to an all-time high for the year. The recent rise certainly isn’t taking into account the results of the recent lackluster third quarter, which continued to show the worrisome downward trends — even though partial asset sales of the company’s Chinese Alibaba stake successfully masked the problems — in growth, engagement and overall profitability.

But Mayer’s confident I’ve-got-this tones on the earnings call itself — especially in pushing a mobile strategy that has not been put in place as yet in any substantive way — won over Wall Street investors, who apparently like how she sounds and, thus, are intrigued with what she might do.

While this kind of perceptual game will only get Yahoo so far, moving out of the teens in share price would be an important benchmark for the company.

The stock was last at that level in August of 2008. At the time, in fact, $20 a share was considered very disappointing, taking place after Microsoft dropped its $44.6 billion hostile bid for Yahoo a few months earlier. Indeed, $20 was a big comedown from when Yahoo shares were above $43 in 2006.

The lowest price Yahoo shares got in recent years were $9.39 in November of 2008, just before then CEO and co-founder Jerry Yang stepped down.

Now the stock is close to double that sad trough, fueled in part by some cosmetic moves to improve culture by Mayer — including free food, smartphones and a promise to end the slow-moving decision-making at Yahoo.

There has also been a start of the promised multi-billion-dollar stock buybacks by the company, although Yahoo has been cagey about how and when it is purchasing. Also helping, more recently, is that several big hedge funds are buying into the story of hope.

Following in the footsteps of successful activist shareholder Dan Loeb of Third Point, who is now on the board and is a major Yahoo investor, others like him have now joined in the party in a bigger way. That includes David Einhorn of Greenlight Capital and Chase Coleman of Tiger Global Management.

The thoughtful Einhorn, who is a friend of Loeb’s, has been in and out of the stock before, buying it on hopes that now ousted CEO Carol Bartz would be Yahoo’s savior and selling it soon after it was clear she might not be. He came back in February with three million shares, sold them in May, but now has upped his stake to just over five million more under Mayer’s regime.

More substantively, Tiger’s Coleman has grabbed 25 million shares (interestingly, he’s also upped his stakes in Groupon and Facebook).

Obviously, they must believe Yahoo is set to move upward, which all depends on Mayer. She’s made one critical stock misstep early in her tenure, by announcing that she was considering keeping the huge cash windfall from its sale of Alibaba stock and not giving it back to shareholders in some form.

That dropped Yahoo’s shares to under $15, but Mayer walked back that mistake and the stock has been climbing since.

For the year to date, it’s up almost 14 percent — a nice rise — although that pales in comparison to Apple’s 39 percent rise, Amazon’s 37 percent rise and, most of all, AOL’s 136 percent leap.

The comparison to the massive stock run that AOL has had, after CEO Tim Armstrong — also a former Googler — cut costs, focused units, sold patents and bought back stock, is often made. It’s perhaps apt, but arguably Yahoo has much better and fixable assets than AOL.

More to the point, Yahoo’s price-to-earnings ratio remains unusually low — it’s 5.6, compared to the S&P’s 14.2 average — which means that the entire business is severely undervalued by Wall Street.

It is if Mayer can create real value by actually staging the comeback she is already getting credit for accomplishing. She certainly has a lot of levers to improve results, from the stock buyback to finally making a deal to sell its multi-billion-dollar stake in Yahoo! Japan to making expense cuts to buying some innovative small start-ups to creating products that aren’t, well, lame.

Most importantly, Mayer has to stop the decimation of Yahoo’s once mighty advertising business, which makes up the bulk of its revenue, as well as improve its search monetization by rejiggering its heretofore dysfunctional partnership with Microsoft. (But, as I wrote earlier this week, she will not be making new search engines with Facebook.)

A gander at this chart of Yahoo’s declining quarterly revenue should give you a good visual of the problem with the core business:

YHOO Revenue Quarterly data by YCharts

And, indeed, Yahoo’s sales have dropped 29 percent since 2007, with typically flat display revenue and declining search revenue, which was once Yahoo’s crown jewel. While operating margins have risen over the years, very few point to the company as an exciting growth story.

And it still isn’t, although investors are starting to consider it a possibility. We’ll see as Mayer makes more significant changes in 2013, hopefully underpinning the stock’s recent rise with a true story of financial strides.

But, for now, giddy shareholders probably should not get too far ahead of themselves. Not that you can stop them: Mayer fan Eric Jackson is calling for Yahoo’s stock to be over $40 again by end of 2013.

Whether the Mayer premium can do pull off that particular investor miracle or not remains to be seen.

What’s interesting about Monday’s International Trade Commission ruling are the questions the trade body is asking of the two tech giants, and, really, of the industry.

In agreeing to review the administrative judge’s ruling in the case, the ITC is asking the bigger questions here, including when, if at all, a product should be banned if the patents it is accused of infringing are related to an industry standard. Also, what exactly does that commitment to license patents on a FRAND (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory) basis really mean?

“Does the mere existence of a FRAND undertaking with respect to a particular patent
preclude issuance of an exclusion order based on infringement of that patent?” the trade body asked in a statement (PDF) on Monday. “Where a patent owner has offered to license a patent to an accused infringer, what framework should be used for determining whether the offer complies with a FRAND undertaking? How would a rejection of the offer by an accused infringer influence the analysis, if at all?”

Those are some mighty important questions.

The ITC, of course, will weigh the issue of whether Apple’s products actually infringe on the Samsung patents. The initial determination by the administrative law judge found that they did not.

The move comes as other courts are also trying to settle questions related to industry standard patents. In a case pitting Google’s Motorola unit against Microsoft, a Seattle federal judge is hearing testimony that could help establish what exactly constitutes fair and reasonable settlement terms.

The question was also due to come up in an Apple-Motorola case, though that matter stopped just short of reaching trial.

In a note to clients Monday, Sterne Agee analyst Shaw Wu said he’s hearing that Apple will collect between $6 and $8 in licensing fees for each smartphone HTC ships in 2013. While I can’t confirm the accuracy of Wu’s report, sources I’ve spoken to suggest that they’re in the ballpark — “an above-average guess,” as one quipped.

So if we take that $6-$8 figure at face value and apply it to the 30 million to 35 million handsets HTC is expected to ship next year, Apple stands to nab between $180 million and $280 million in licensing fees. Which isn’t a huge sum for a company sitting on approximately $121 billion in cash, but it’s something. And more importantly, it may set a precedent for how Apple settles similar IP battles in the future. Certainly, that’s Wu’s take.

“With both Samsung and Motorola still under litigation with Apple, the big question is whether they are closer to a settlement,” Wu wrote. “We think the answer is yes and the terms set with HTC could at least provide a blueprint. We think it is fair that Apple will get some licensing revenue for the intellectual property it has developed in making the modern smart phone and tablet with touchscreens.”

Until now, Apple indicated only that it wanted other companies not to copy it. It didn’t seem interested in licensing its patents.

Late CEO Steve Jobs seemed more interested in crushing Android than trying to extract royalties from those that use Google’s operating system.

By contrast, Microsoft has also said it believes Android devices infringe its products, but has been plenty happy to license its patents.

Under the 10-year deal announced on Saturday night, however, Apple appears to be following suit, allowing HTC to continue to do business as usual — and collecting a fee in return.

Also surprising is the fact that HTC is apparently not being forced to pay an arm and a leg for that privilege.

Although terms are not being disclosed, HTC did say that it does not expect the agreement of have an “adverse material impact” on its financials. Whatever the company is paying (and rest assured, Apple is being paid here), it would appear to be relatively cheap considering that a jury ordered Samsung to pay upward of a billion dollars for infringing Apple patents.

Of course, Samsung continues to fight that verdict in court and is still some way from actually having to write Apple a check.

Whether this indicates a willingness by Apple to settle with Android device makers beyond HTC remains to be seen. Apple hasn’t been totally closed to patent deals with mobile phone makers — it has a pact of some sort with Nokia and a rather broad cross-licensing arrangement with Microsoft. It even offered Samsung a deal at one point, though it was seeking $30 per phone and $40 per tablet.

It’s not totally clear what type of license HTC has to Apple know-how, but HTC did say the deal will allow it to continue shipping its existing lineup of devices, a lineup that includes a wide range of Android and Windows Phone devices.

Apple may also be playing a bit of “the enemy of the enemy is my friend” here. Though Apple and HTC have hardly been chummy, the company’s biggest strategic battles are against Samsung and Google (which now owns Motorola). By making peace with a struggling HTC, Apple could boost the Taiwanese phone maker in its battle with those two larger rivals.

The deal comes with a 10-year license agreement.

Here’s the press release. Our mobile maven Ina Fried will have more in a bit:

HTC and Apple Settle Patent Dispute

All Patent Litigation Between The Companies Dismissed

TAIPEI, Taiwan and CUPERTINO, Calif., Nov. 10, 2012 /PRNewswire/ — HTC and Apple have reached a global settlement that includes the dismissal of all current lawsuits and a ten-year license agreement.  The license extends to current and future patents held by both parties.  The terms of the settlement are confidential.

“HTC is pleased to have resolved its dispute with Apple, so HTC can focus on innovation instead of litigation,” said Peter Chou, CEO of HTC.

“We are glad to have reached a settlement with HTC,” said Tim Cook, CEO of Apple.  ”We will continue to stay laser focused on product innovation.”

Apple declined to comment, but is expected to appeal. A VirnetX representative was not immediately available for comment.

VirnetX also has filed complaints with the U.S. International Trade Commission against Apple, alleging that its iPhone, iPad and Mac products violate the company’s patents. In addition, the company has cases pending against Cisco, Avaya and Siemens, with those cases set for trial in March 2013.

The patent holding company had previously won a lawsuit against Microsoft, alleging several versions of Windows also infringed on its patents.

Matt Chatterton

“We’re pleased that the court has dismissed Apple’s lawsuit with prejudice,” Motorola said in a statement to AllThingsD. “Motorola has long offered licensing to our extensive patent portfolio at a reasonable and non-discriminatory rate in line with industry standards. We remain interested in reaching an agreement with Apple.”

An Apple representative declined to comment. The company is seeking to have the dismissal made “without prejudice,”–a legal term that essentially means that the matter could be heard later.

The suit is one of many legal disputes raging between Apple and Google, and within the broader mobile industry. This one was set, in part, to perhaps determine what might constitute fair and reasonable licensing terms by which Apple could license Motorola’s industry-standard wireless patents.

Microsoft and Motorola have a similar question set to go before a Seattle federal court next week. The Federal Trade Commission is also said to be weighing whether to sue Google over the handling of such patents.

In one of the other high-profile battles, a San Jose, Calif.-based jury ordered Samsung to pay Apple more than $1 billion over various patents related to its Android-based devices. Samsung has vowed to fight the verdict, as well as any injunctions against its products.

Point your browser at the German Web site of its Motorola Mobility division and you’ll find a paucity of smartphones, not a single Android tablet, and a notice promising some updated devices by the end of July.

July has come and gone, of course. And now we’re well into October and those promised updated devices are nowhere to be found. Why the delay?

We put that question to both Google and its Motorola subsidiary and neither has yet responded, but there’s one obvious explanation: The multiple injunctions against Motorola Mobility products that Microsoft and Apple have won in Germany. To date, Microsoft been granted three separate injunctions against Motorola Mobility in Germany. Apple has won three as well. So with half a dozen injunctions against it, Google likely had no recourse but to yank much of its allegedly infringing portfolio, leaving the German smartphone markets with just the Razr, the Razr i, and the Gleam HD + — a fraction of its handset portfolio.

An irksome situation, I imagine, for Google, which spent $12.5 billion on Motorola Mobility not just to “supercharge the Android ecosystem,” but to acquire a patent portfolio with which to protect its mobile OS. At this point, that costly acquisition doesn’t appear to have succeeded at either.

Update: Reached for comment, a Motorola spokeswoman said the decline in devices we’re seeing in Germany was planned all along. “As we have previously stated Motorola Mobility is focusing on fewer mobile devices,” she told AllThingsD. “As a result we have phased out some of our lower tier devices in Europe/Germany.”

And what of those updated devices the company promised by the end of July? Who knows …

Judge Lucy Koh had issued the injunction in June based on the likelihood that a jury would find that a specific Apple design patent had been infringed. Although the jury largely sided with Apple in the case and awarded more than $1 billion in damages, the jury didn’t find Samsung’s tablet infringed on that particular product.

“The Court agrees with Samsung that the sole basis for the June 26 Preliminary Injunction was the Court’s finding that Samsung likely infringed the D’889 Patent,” Koh said in her ruling. “The jury has found otherwise. Thus, the sole basis for the June 26 Preliminary Injunction no longer exists.”

Koh could still impose a permanent sales ban on that and other Samsung products after a hearing in December.

Samsung said it was pleased with Koh’s ruling.

“We are pleased with the court’s action today, which vindicates our position that there was no infringement of Apple’s design patent and that an injunction was not called for,” Samsung said in a statement.

Koh had initially declined to lift the ban, noting that the issue was before an appeals court. However, the Federal Circuit court last week ruled that Koh could lift the ban if she saw fit.

For the time being, Koh is also hanging on to a $2.6 million bond that Apple had posted, but will decide later whether any of that money should be given to Samsung on the basis that the injunction was wrongfully issued.

Separately, Samsung on Monday also filed court papers to add the iPhone 5 to a second suit between the two companies.

“We have always preferred to compete in the marketplace with our innovative products, rather than in courtrooms,” Samsung said. “However, Apple continues to take aggressive legal measures that will limit market competition. Under these circumstances, we have little choice but to take the steps necessary to protect our innovations and intellectual property rights.”

Yahoo could announce in the coming week what it plans to do with the billions of dollars it recently garnered after closing the sale of a portion of its stake in China’s Alibaba, according to sources close to the situation.

As AllThingsD has previously reported, the company is most likely to do a share buyback with the $3.65 billion, a move that could boost its still-lackluster stock.

That’s what happened when AOL did one in late June after it got a pile of cash from hawking its patent assets. Its shares are up more than 25 percent for those last three months, while Yahoo’s have gone up less than one percent in the same time frame.

When it announced the completion of the deal in mid-September, Yahoo said that it would hand over 85 percent of the after-tax proceeds to shareholders. (The Silicon Valley Internet giant will keep about $650 million for its own use.)

At the time of the transaction, a Yahoo spokeswoman said that the company declined to give any specifics around the form of return. The company could also, for example, decide to give investors a dividend, too, although Yahoo has long explicitly favored stock buybacks.

“The form and timing of returning proceeds will be determined by the board and management, taking into consideration the best interests of the company and its shareholders,” said the Yahoo flack.

Speaking of flak, new CEO Marissa Mayer tried to give some to tech journalists, some of whom have been giving her a bit of a hard time of late for showing signs of potentially being too spendy.

In a memo to staff announcing the date of its employee holiday party — it’ll be on December 1 on Pier 48 in San Francisco — Mayer took issue with a particular report from Business Insider about how she tussled over costs with departing CFO Tim Morse, whom she ousted last week.

Business Insider claimed that included her taking the price of the holiday shindig from $100,000 to $3 million, due in part to a change in venue location.

Mayer begged to differ, noting in the internal memo that the event would not bust the bank and still be tons of fun:

“Building on the theme of tech reporters not being great with math or numbers, rumors of this year’s party budget have been greatly exaggerated.”

(Is there actual time for tech reporters being math-impaired to become a theme that’s being built upon at Yahoo? I thought Mayer said the company would be building innovative products.)

But since we in the media are apparently dunces, I suppose we’ll just have to rely on Yahoo’s own numbers from its last quarter — which I embedded below — to tell the tale of continuous troubling declines in search queries and page views, declines in minutes spent on its media properties, declines in growth of unique visitors and flat-as-a-sugar-cookie growth in revenue.

Or, as Mae West famously said in the most delightful math quote ever: “A man has one hundred dollars and you leave him with two dollars. That’s subtraction.”

So is this Q2 financial performance at Yahoo — which is certainly not Mayer’s fault since she just arrived, but will be her responsibility to fix going forward:

YHOO_Q212EarningsPresentation

Swiss railway operator SBB says the design of a new clock app on the iPad copies its signature — and trademarked — clock.

“The rights for this design of the watch are (owned) by the SBB,” a railway spokesperson told AllThingsD. “We are in contact with Apple to seek together an agreement about the rights.”

The clock is the design of Swiss engineer Hans Hilfiker, with licensed versions selling for hundreds of dollars.

An Apple representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Design issues aside, the clock is a welcome addition to the iPad, which until now has bizarrely lacked the alarm clock and timer features found on other iOS devices.

A German court ruled Thursday that a number of tablets and smartphones made by Google’s Motorola Mobility division infringe a Microsoft patent, and granted the software giant a ban on their sales in Germany. Microsoft must pay a bond of $61.4 million if it wants to see the ban implemented.

The patent at issue in the case covers “a method and system for receiving user input data into a computer system having a graphical windowing environment.” And it covers a functionality that Microsoft alleges has been built into Android. Indeed, the only reason Microsoft hasn’t asserted the patent against other Android device makers like HTC and Samsung is because those companies have already agreed to license it. Google is the lone holdout. And now it must either modify Android to avoid further infringement or agree to pay Microsoft the royalties it demands.

Microsoft was quite pleased with the ruling, the third that has gone in its favor against Google in Germany. “We’re pleased this decision builds on previous rulings in Germany that have already found Motorola is broadly infringing Microsoft’s intellectual property,” Deputy General Counsel Dave Howard said in a statement. “We will continue to enforce injunctions against Motorola products in Germany and hope Motorola will join other Android device makers by taking a license to Microsoft’s patented inventions.”

Google has not yet replied to a request for comment, but it will undoubtedly appeal the court’s ruling and request a stay of the injunction.

Update: This just in from Google’s Motorola Mobility unit: “We are waiting for the written decision and are evaluating our options, including an appeal.”