Apple is attempting to stop the used of "standards essential" patents on 3G technology as legal bludgeons against smartphone competitors. To make its case, the company has gone directly to the standards body behind 3G wireless networking, the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI). In a letter to ETSI dated last November (but only recently uncovered by the Wall Street Journal) Apple suggested that patents offered as part of wireless networking standards should be governed by standardized royalty rates and barred from being used as the basis for legal injunctions.

As the war over smartphone supremacy has spilled over into the courtroom, some players—including Samsung and Motorola—have taken to leveraging patents essential to 3G wireless networking standards in lawsuits largely aimed at Apple. Those patents were offered up to the ETSI to help create 3G standards on the condition that they be licensed on fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms.

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