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Apple Overturns Motorola's German iPad and iPhone Sales Bans
SpuriousLogic sends this excerpt from a BBC article detailing the suspension of a sales ban on certain Apple products in Germany:
"Motorola Mobility had forced Apple to remove several iPad and iPhone models from its online store [yesterday] after enforcing a patent infringement court ruling delivered in December. An appeals court lifted the ban after Apple made a new license payment offer. However, Germany-based users may still face the loss of their push email iCloud service after a separate ruling. 'A suspension like this is available only against a bond, but Apple is almost drowning in cash and obviously won't have had a problem with obtaining and posting a bond.' ... A statement from Apple said: 'All iPad and iPhone models will be back on sale through Apple's online store in Germany shortly.'"
Reader DJRumpy points out that Motorola is seeking royalties of 2.25% for Apple's wireless devices in exchange for a license to use Motorola's patents.
You use something someone created, you pay them for it. Then why is it when the situation is reversed, Apple says: "F*ck you! I'm going to ban it.". Just makes them seem like hypocrites and frankly, douches.
Apple flings lawsuits like mad. Then it bites them in the butt. Can we all just agree that the patent system is idiotic and far too overbearing already?
Simple. If every one of the (estimated) eighteen companies that own essential GSM patents demanded a separate license at 2.2% instead of the few pennies per unit that they almost certainly charge to everyone else, it would add up to almost half the cost of the device.
Besides, there's debate over whether Apple's purchase of off-the-shelf GSM silicon (rather than designing it themselves) means that they already paid for the license, in which case Motorola is double dipping....
Except that with the other manufacturers, it probably has been a patent cross licensing, something that Apple has refused to do from the start.
Apple does cross license their FRAND patents which are included in the standards. They don't cross license their other patents such as UI and proprietary hardware. That's the whole point, Motorola seems to be trying to use their FRAND patents (which were included in standards only because of their promises) to leverage against Apple to get licensing to patents that aren't part of any standard. It is exactly why there are rules in the first place about how you can use patents once you agree they are to be used in a standard.
As mentioned above, the 'reasonable' part doesn't apply if you don't pay when you should.
Source for the second (and hopefully last) time :)
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
If every company with a FRAND-related patent charged 2.25% nobody would be able to create a product. That you think it's not a ton of money shows how short-sighted you are being and how you're failing to look at the bigger picture.
Not to mention that FRAND stands for "Fair, Reasonable, and Non-Discriminatory" and 2.25% is most certainly _NOT_ Fair nor Reasonable.
I'll take some number from my butt (definitions of my butt may vary, but in this context it is random site on internet).
1.186 billion mobile broadband subscribers.
Let's say that half of these are on a 3G chip that somehow requires the Motorola 3G license: 593 million.
If these devices sell for an average of $20 we would have 11,86 billion in sales for these devices.
If Motorola wants 2.25% of the sales of these devices that would mean $297 million, a very significant number considering it is a single patent of a large portfolio of 1729 patents (yes, one thousand seven hundred and twenty nine).
Imagine if each of these patents would warrant an average licensing cost of 0.1% rather than the 2.25% that Motorola wants, then we would look at a licensing cost of more than the sales price to license 3G technology for the device. 2.25% does not smell FRAND to me, but I am no patent lawyer, I only pretend I know stuff on the internet.
for initial negotiated fees i agree.. but for fees applied to a product made by a company that knowingly attempted to doge the fee..it isn't.
i'm not taking any side on this.. as i don't know the details.. but it only makes since that the fee applied after you are caught doing wrong be high enough to prevent you from doing it again. if it was the same cost as just licensing it to begin with then there would be zero incentive to license it ahead of time but rather you would produce and hope you didn't get caught an did then it's a know cost that you had already accounted for.
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
apple didn't want a biolerplate frand agreement. They wanted their own agreement (which covered previous unlicensed use), and thats what allowed Motorola to dictate whatever terms they want. There is big money involved because if Motorola is correct apple has been infringing on their patent for multiple product generations. The money isn't just licensing for next year, but licensing/damages for the patent being used unlicensed for years and producing big profit.
The other way round, actually. What Apple wanted is a license under FRAND terms: You give me the license, I pay you cash. Now many companies in that business don't want these terms, they prefer: You give me a license to your patents, I'll give you a license to mine, because it is cheaper. And that's the kind of license that Motorola wanted to offer and that Apple didn't want.
And there can't be damages for any time where Motorola didn't offer a license under FRAND terms, otherwise the requirement for FRAND terms would be a joke. If I have a patent that I'm required to license to you for X dollars, I could just ask for 10 X dollars, delay an agreement for as long as possible, and then ask for X dollars in license fees and 3X dollars in damages for the time of the delay. (Obviously asking for X dollars for that time is fine).
... where software patents are bad, evil, etc. unless they're being used against apple.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.