Apple Claims Samsung and Motorola Patent Monopoly

esocid writes with a bit in Daily Tech about the ongoing spat between Apple and the rest of the mobile world. From the article: "Apple lawyers are crying foul about Samsung, and ... Motorola's allegedly 'anticompetitive,' use of patents. ... Apparently Apple is irate about these companies' countersuits, which rely largely on patents covering wireless communications, many of which are governed by the 'fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory' (F/RAND) principle, as they were developed as part of industry standards. ... Apple takes issue with the fact that Motorola in its countersuit declines to differentiate the 7 F/RAND patents in its 18 patent collection. ... Regardless of what Florian Mueller says, it's hard to dispute that the 'rules' of F/RAND are largely community dictated and ambiguous."

Comments

Re:For Chrissakes

[iluvcapra]

Then you can, you know, compete on the quality of your products, rather than trying to stuff newspaper down each others throats in what can only be described as the bonfire of the idiots.

The point of the lawsuit is that Motorola and Samsung are claiming that patents they control are essential for implementing technical standards, and are supposed to be offered to everyone, but instead of offering to license to Apple they're just suing. They own patents that can crush any cellphone manufacturer if asserted, thus they were required as part of the standards process to permit anyone to use them and to not charge different people different prices to license them. You can't sue for them without making the standards proprietary in effect. If they sue Apple for them today, how does Huawei know they aren't going to get hit tomorrow?

Regardless of what Florian Mueller says, it's hard to dispute that the 'rules' of F/RAND are largely community dictated and ambiguous

Regardless of what a patent lawyer says, clearly we should just read the nouns in the summary and relax, knowing that if "Apple," "$ANDROID_LICENSEE" and "patent" appear in the summary we know who they "good guys" are without further need for investigation.

Re:How dare they sue us!

[regimechange]

It's really very unfair. Here we were, just defending our rightful monopoly over all things rectangular with screens on the front, and these uppity bastards with their "patents" on "foundational RF technologies" that they supposedly "invented" are getting all touchy about it. WTF?

Problem with your thinking is....no tablet looked anything remotely like the ipad until the ipad came out. Look at the picture at the bottom of the link to see the blatant copying Samsung did. http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/08/30/apple_accuses_motorola_samsung_of_monopolizing_markets_with_patents.html