Apple wants to bar Samsung Electronics executives with knowledge of leaked confidential information from negotiating any mobile device licenses for the South Korean company for the next two years.
The iPhone maker is also asking a federal court to bar Samsung from seeking an injunction in another patent dispute between the two companies that is currently before the court in California, because of its “unclean hands.” That case comes up for trial next year.
The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, San Jose division, is considering sanctions against Samsung and its lawyers because of concerns that the company’s external counsel may have shared confidential information from Apple with Samsung, including information on Apple’s patent licensing agreements with Nokia, Ericsson, Sharp and Philips, which were marked for viewing by the attorneys alone.
The issue came up after testimony in June from Nokia’s chief intellectual property officer, Paul Melin, that Samsung executive Seungho Ahn told him at a license negotiation meeting that he knew the terms of Nokia’s licensing agreement with Apple, and went on to recite the terms of the license to prove his point.
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