The drama that is the Apple vs. Samsung keeps giving the public more and more internal information. An Apple employe has testified that Apple’s patent licensing director, Boris Teksler revealed in court that Apple iOS design patents have been licensed to Microsoft. Apple did a good job of showing that they do work with competitors and are not the wall garden everyone thinks. AllThingsD’s reports: “Teksler noted that Apple and Microsoft have a cross-license agreement that does cover the design patents at issue in this case, but said that there are also special “anti-cloning” provisions in the agreement between those two companies. We couldn’t copy each other’s products.”
Reuters also reported that Apple’s decision to license its design patents to Microsoft was consistent with its corporate strategy, Teksler said, “because the agreement prohibited Microsoft from manufacturing copies. There was no right with respect to these design patents to build clones of any type.”
In 2010 Apple offered Samsung a license to its patent portfolio but Samsung refused. Microsoft has started making its own hardware business with the Surface. The deal that Microsoft has with Apple will keep it out of court with Apple should the Surface takes off. It should be interesting to see if the Surface does take off will Apple change its mind.