Reuters reports that Samsung is in preliminary talks with European Union regulators in order to settle antitrust charges stemming from the company's use of standards-essential patents in litigation against Apple. Samsung could have faced fines of up to $17.3 billion, but any settlement would apparently result in no fine and no admission of wrongdoing."Samsung has been involved in settlement discussions for several months now. Samsung wants to settle," said one of the sources, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter. The sources said it was still too early to say if the discussions would result in a settlement.Samsung has come under criticism for using standards-essential patents in litigation, as such patents are required to be licensed under reasonable terms in order to allow competitors to offer products supporting industry standards. Many
