Samsung Slaps ObjectVideo

JH
John Honovich
•Published Feb 01, 2012 00:00 AM
PUBLIC - This article does not require an IPVM subscription. Feel free to share.

The video analytic legal fight is heating up. Now, approaching a year of litigation with no end in sight, Samsung sharply criticized ObjectVideo for misuse of their source code. In this update, we examine the debate involved as well as how and why this legal fight looks to be extending into its third calendar year.

Let's start with a review of Samsung's letter to the ITC:

  • "ObjectVideo admits that its consultants have violated an agreement it had reached with Respondents’ counsel for the protection of sensitive source code information."
  • Specifically, they claim that OV consultants, "put unencrypted summaries of Samsung’s source code on a network and  transmitted those summaries over the internet via email, in violation of this agreement."
  • Samsung's attorney alleges that OV tries to 'trivialize its breach' and accuses that "ObjectVideo now tries to use its violation as an excuse to remove the controls that it had previously agreed to.  Like blaming the speed limit when you get a ticket, ObjectVideo is blaming the agreed-upon rules themselves, for its careless breach of those rules."
  • Samsung's attorney charges OV with having a 'cavalier attitude' towards source code protection. Samsung is asking for a formal Protective Order to increase protection of their property.

Even putting aside the security of Samsung's source code, a couple of key tactical take aways we see here:

  • Samsung is clearly fighting hard and willing to spend a significant amount of its own time and money to defend itself against OV's charges.
  • The harder that the defendants make it to access source code the longer this litigation lasts and the more expensive it gets for OV. Neither of these are good for OV, the much much smaller party.

Extending Target Date

This month, the court issued a notice extending the target date to complete the case. Previously, the target date was the end of 2012. Now, the court has pushed that back more than two months until March 8, 2013. The court cited the complexity of the case including multiple parties and six patents as causes in pushing this back.