Swedish firm, Ericsson has filed an appeal with the International Trade Commission to ban the import of Samsung products in the US due to alleged FRAND patent infringements. Ericsson had already filed a complaint regarding the same with the US ITC last week and has subsequently appealed for a ban today.

Samsung had an agreement with Ericsson for these patents since 2001, which expired in 2007 and renewed. But the same has not been repeated this time around and apparently two years of negotiations have failed to bear any fruit.

Fredrik Hallstan, Spokesman Ericsson has indicated that, Ericsson is forced to take the drastic step in order to pressure Samsung to sign a licensing agreement within a reasonable time frame.

The licensing patents in question are related to “several telecommunications and networking standards” which Samsung uses in their smartphones. Ericsson holds more than 30,000 patents across the globe and is said to have spent around $5 billion on R&D in the last year itself.

Although, Ericsson hasn’t disclosed any amount for the said patents, they are bound to be significant for them to push the patent deal so aggressively with Samsung. It will be interesting to see how Samsung responds here. With so much experience in patent litigations in the last few years, we don’t expect Samsung – Ericsson deal to happen quickly or smoothly either.

We will keep you posted on nay updates on the same. Feel free to share your opinions in the comments section below.  :)