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Summarizing the Apple-Android Patent Battle
FlorianMueller writes "Apple's patent dispute with Motorola is one of the biggest legal battles going on at the moment. Apple, which is also entangled in litigation with Nokia and HTC, recently beefed up its legal team, but it also keeps throwing in ever more patents. Apple made important court filings last Wednesday and Thursday. The bottom line: Apple now asserts 24 patents against Motorola, which uses 18 patents in claims against Apple. 21 of Apple's infringement allegations relate to Android, 3 to Motorola set-top boxes and DVRs. Motorola targets the whole range of Apple products."
Mueller followed up the above article with an excellent visualization of how the patents, companies, and courts intersect.
It's all about establishing a nasty, thick web of patents not covered by RAND to raise the barrier to entry impossibly high.
This is why I criticize Apple's walled garden, despite not owning one. They're very, very interested in making impossible for those of us who don't want to buy in to actually have a choice.
Apple wants to own the next computer/consumer space. Google wants to own it, too. Rather than letting consumers make the decision, Apple will try to get the courts to decide for them. Easier to sway a single judge - or, at most, 12 jurors - than the entire consuming public.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Apple lost just about their entire claim against Nokia, when half the patents they were seeking to enforce were declared invalid by the FTC, and the rest dismissed as not being infringed.
It would be interesting to see Apple now try to enforce those patents declared invalid against Motorola et al.
This all started when Apple refused to pay consortium of GSM patent holders fees that all other GSM manufacturers subscribe to, some how feeling the were above the law.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
There was some confusion out there about the ITC staff (Office of Unfair Import Investigations, OOUI) report, and this quote from your post reflects them:
No.
1. As I explained in this recent blog post, Apple's ITC assertions against Nokia were split into two parts. The staff report that the press reported on in early December related to only 4 of the 10 patents Apple originally asserted against Nokia.
2. That staff opinion is just an opinion, not a definitive dismissal. My Apple vs. Android chart does mention that some patents were dropped from the ITC cases between Apple and HTC: on pages 8 ("Move #7 - Apple drops 4 patents from ITC complaint against HTC") and 10 ("Move #9 -- HTC drops 1 patent from ITC complaint against Apple"). But the instances I mention in my chart were definitive partial terminations of those cases. The ITC staff opinion published a month ago on one Apple v. Nokia case is not definitive. It's an opinion and the ITC's Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) can agree or disagree with it. There have been many cases already in which the ALJ judge took decisions that were very different from the staff reports. I've seen a long list of cases in which the staff then actually appealed the ALJ's decision, which is clear evidence that decisions deviate from those staff reports quite often. The staff report is an opinion, and I don't mean to downplay the importance of the staff and its reports, but that is just not a dismissal of claims (let alone the invalidation of patents).
3. Even if some patents lost before the ITC, they might (as my blog post mentioned under item 1 explains) still be enforced in a US federal district court. My chart makes that distinction in connection with the patents dropped from ITC cases. HTC's '183 patent is grayed-out from Move #9 on because it was only asserted in the ITC so far and they withdrew it. By contrast, Apple's '867, '131, '852 and RE'486 patents were only dropped from an ITC complaint but Apple does enforce them against Motorola now in a federal district court, so the patents are still alive.
4. The chart this article refers to is purely about Apple vs. Motorola and Apple v. HTC. I'm going to do the same visualization for the Apple-Nokia conflict as well but it will be a separate document because otherwise things would become too complex to fit in a single chart. In fact, I already have that one in place for the most part, so it will become available pretty soon. (Also for Microsoft vs. Motorola and Oracle vs. Google, by the way.)
The RAND thing only applies to GSM forum members. Apple has refused to join the GSM forum. Nokia can add any conditions they like.
While you are right that Motorola drew first blood against Apple in terms of actually suing, Motorola's Delaware request for declaratory judgment makes the following claim: "Apple has professed rights [...] based on Motorola Mobility's activities related to Motorola Mobility's Droid, Droid 2, Droid X, Cliq, Cliq XT, BackFlip, Devour A555, i1 and Charm products" (you can find the details of that case listed on page 22 of my PDF)
I don't know what exactly Motorola means by "Apple has professed rights" and whether that description given by Motorola is true, but it could mean that Motorola launched a pre-emptive strike. The fact that Apple's suits against Motorola were filed only 23 days later (Motorola attacked on 06 October 2010, Apple filed suits against Motorola on 23 October 2010) -- not a whole lot of time to prepare suits of that kind -- also suggests that Apple would have sued at any rate.
But let me make this clear as well: I don't mean to be judgmental about someone who sues. It would be too simplistic a view to say that the one who sues is automatically doing evil. Lawsuits happen if parties can't reach an agreement on something, and one would have to know about the nature and content of all of the previous communication between the parties to know what resulted in the filing of a suit. In many cases one would probably conclude that it's an act of aggression, but in other cases one might have a different or more differentiated perspective if only one knew all of the facts.
I wasn't going to reply to someone who describes my hard work on this as leaving "taint", but here goes anyway ;-)
You do raise an important point: cross-licensing. However, cross-license deals come in all shapes and forms. In a few cases the parties will be on an equal footing; in most cases one party will be considerably if not hugely stronger. In the latter case, a "settlement" will also be announced, but in economic and strategic terms, one party will end up losing.
For now I'm rather skeptical of the impact the patent portfolios of the Android camp can have on their competitors. I gave a quick overview of the five strongest areas of Motorola's patent portfolio in this recent blog post and I also pointed out that Google makes a weak showing against Oracle because Google still hasn't countersued. When I wrote that blog post, Google had already had three months since Oracle sued. Now there's been almost another month and Google still doesn't seem to have found any patents with which it could build a serious counterthreat against Oracle...
- Motorola started the patent case agains apple, motorola is the patent troll in this case - Nokia requests patent and licenses which it doesnt require from other companies so discriminating Apple
And 90 procent of the posts will go about how apple is in fault here.... Yeah but they have patents so they are (more) evil then others. If they wouldnt have a patent portfolio they would be sitting ducks...
symbolset, it's regrettable that after my facts-based reply you just go off-topic here with unclear and unspecified allegations. Instead of a pathetic attempt to smear, you should take a look at the patent portfolios in question. A lot of people believe Google is such a big company that it should own a lot of key patents, but it owns relatively few patents and most of them are related to search engine technologies. Also, even though you mentioned HTC, you won't seriously believe that Apple would lose sleep over HTC's patent portfolio...
Apple decided to move into mobile phones and required hardware to do so. Lacking any actual know how on making phones, like many companies they borrowed the hardware from other companies - Motorola. Motorola is used to licensing out their hardware patents. Motorola makes money on just about every phone sale through their hardware licensing. So Apple asked Motorola to license their technology, but not like everyone else. Apple asked Motorola to trade software patents for hardware patents. Motorola told them to piss into the wind. The only way they were getting Motorola patens, Motorola said, was to trade for other hardware patents or pay a licensing fee like everyone else. Apple took choice C - to use the hardware patents even without license so they could make their iPhone - which would not exist without the Motorola technology.
The issue here boils down to this question: Are software patents in general worth the same as hardware patents. And of course the answer to anyone who knows anything about the subject is a resounding no. Hardware patents take billions of dollars to develop and millions of man hours in testing physical objects in a physical world. A software patent is an often unimplemented idea most often without a single line of code - vapor. Software patents often sound like this: "A system where a user can use a icon based interface to lookup information about his/her pet in real time with an image and a video of the pet in the same interface as the typing interface where the pet can see the user type". No - really - they are that dumb and ambiguous.
So Motorola makes an antenna design that will work within solid concrete tunnels without requiring frequency modulation or signal attenuation at the cost of billions of dollars and millions of man hours, testing – certification – more testing, IC engineering, fabrication and design, so much time and effort that to even list what needs to be done would be exhausting - and Apple thinks a fair trade would be the patent that consists of the words: "A system where the user can click and drag through a list of music and select which songs to buy with a button that allows a user to listen to a preview of the song." - Seriously?
Software patents should never exist. Apple should lose their ass for stealing Motorola technology even after Motorola said they could not use it. If you don’t like the terms of the deal –that means no deal! Not I just use their hardware patents anyway. Who the fuck acts like that? Is Apple a 5 year old? Then after stealing Motorola’s hardware they have the audacity to claim patent infringement? Justice would be well served if Motorola got a big chunk of every iPhone or other Apple device using their hardware without permission. A punitive amount too, not a happy negotiated amount. If the normal is %1 they should pay %10. If it’s %10 they should pay %50. Theft should not at the end of the day, be profitable for stealing technology!
You cannot take without paying for it.
You cannot trade software patents for hardware patents.
You cannot make up your own rules if you don't want to play nice with your hardware vendor
yes, the patent descriptions in my examples are fabricated, but they are still indicative of hardware patent vs. software patent. Don’t complain unless you also include the actual patents in question I’m just trying to illustrate the difference between software and hardware patents.