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Apple 'offered Samsung $30-per-mobe' patent licence truce

Sammy turned down offer it could definitely refuse

Apple offered Samsung a patent licensing deal at $30 per smartphone after warning the South Koreans they were infringing its fruity designs, a court heard.

One of the iToy maker's witnesses revealed the snubbed settlement in public on Friday when he mentioned it during the companies' patent trial. Samsung stands accused of ripping off the Apple iPhone for its own products, and denies wrongdoing.

Samsung was warned in August 2010 that its Android-powered gadgets infringed Apple's patents and copied the iPhone, the jury was told. The Cupertino company added: “Many more Apple patents are relevant to the Android platform [and] Apple has not authorised the use of any of these patents.”

Then in October that year, Apple sent over a presentation outlining how Samsung was ripping off its stuff and how much it should pay. The fruity firm offered a licence fee of $30 per smartphone and $40 per tablet.

"Samsung chose to embrace and imitate Apple’s iPhone archetype,” the company told the court. “Apple would have preferred that Samsung request a licence to do this in advance. Because Samsung is a strategic supplier to Apple, we are prepared to offer a royalty-bearing licence for this category of device.”

Apple also said it would offer discounts on the licence price for various categories of phone if Samsung cross-licensed its patents back to Cupertino. The South Korean company would get a 20 per cent discount for a cross-licence, a 40 per cent discount if the operating system on the phone or tablet was already licensed to Apple, and another 20 per cent off for phones that also had non-proprietary features.

In 2010, Apple reckoned Samsung had already clocked up $250m with its allegedly infringing phones.

Samsung refused the licensing deal. The trial continues and is expected to conclude at the end of the month. ®

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