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EU Targets Motorola In Antitrust Investigation Over Standards-Essential Patents
Fluffeh writes "Motorola Mobility has found itself on the receiving end of an antitrust investigation by the European Commission due to its alleged abuse of standards-essential patents related to WiFi, H.264, and 3G wireless networking. The EC investigation comes shortly after it launched a similar investigation of Samsung, which has been attempting to leverage its 3G-related patents against Apple. The investigation could be especially worrisome for Google, which was recently granted approval of its planned merger with Motorola."
We all know who is behind the complaint, and pretending we don't know slows justice. Did they remember to filter their involvement through a proxy like RBC again? Who knows, or cares. It's all transparent at this point. Did they remember to engage their plausible deniability?
Frankly I don't care any more. The base problem is patent and copyright. If Y'all won't fix the real problem you're doomed to deal with the derivaties of your lack. That's just how it is.
Do away with copyrights and patents and all these suits are moot. Me and the judges can toddle on down to the corner tav for some beers.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
The whole "debate" on the viability of the NHS is just a convenient justification for recently passed Tory-led reforms that many consider "privitisation through the back door". The increase in funding earlier on the last decade has started to show results, and heath outcomes are generally on the rise - why we are looking at another complete overhaul of NHS structure is beyond most observers.
The NHS performs quite well compared to any other system in the developed world - it also allows the UK to have the lowest cost as a percentage of GDP (in the developed world, adjusted for demographics) due to the nationalised/socialised nature of the organisation.
http://www.commonwealthfund.org/Surveys/2011/Nov/2011-International-Survey.aspx
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The problem is that the patents being leveraged against companies like Motorola are patents that don't require much R&D and so don't require a standards committee to come up with, but similarly aren't covered by FRAND as a result.
Many of the things companies like Apple and Microsoft are using against their competitors are just as important to computing and particularly in the case of Apple, modern interaction, but don't have the FRAND badge.
So you've got this absurd situation where Apple can prevent companies like Motorola using tech that is pretty essential to a modern smartphone, but Motorola is barred from doing the same - even though Motorola's patents required a far bigger R&D investment to come up with for the most part.
Until Apple entered the phone market, all other phone manufacturers got along pretty well with patents. The whole patent cluster fuck in the market now is entirely on Apple. Motorola, Sony-Ericcson, Nokia, Samsung, HTC, and so on all got along pretty well until Apple came and fucked things up in the market. What incentive is there for companies with the talent and experience to produce new wireless standards to do so? they can't profit from those standards because of FRAND, and they can't use those standards in a product because Apple will prevent them doing so with some lame thing that shouldn't even be patentable. We sure as hell can't rely on Apple to produce new wireless standards, they can't even build a fucking antenna onto their handset properly.
It's really sad because Apple really shook up the phone market when they entered it, they forced other companies to adapt or die, and really pushed smartphone innovation in an incredible way. Now they're doing completely the opposite - they're killing smartphone innovation, and haven't done anything really worthwhile and innovative now since the original iPad.
So you can rant about FRAND abuse all you want, but all you're doing is making it clear that there's no point in companies putting effort into FRAND based standards in the first place because it puts them at a competitive disadvantage. Better to do things the Apple/Microsoft way and come up with unilateral standards that you force into the market place by abusing your market dominance, then sue other players who dare to try and use them to enter the marketplace too.
Ultimately the best thing Samsung, Nokia, HTC, etc. could do at this point is jointly develop their own standards without the FRAND badge, use their combined market weight to force them into the industry and refuse to license them to Apple, so that Apple can't even have a smartphone that works on future networks at all. It's apparently the way business has to be done now.
FRAND worked great when the market was full of mature and reasonable companies willing to maintain a degree of healthy competition and work together where it was necessary, but that isn't Apple, Apple is the child who wants the world to itself, and anyone else can get fucked, so FRAND no longer works. If Apple had brought it's innovations into the market and shared them with other phone companies in the same way phone companies share their fundamental wireless tech we'd all be better off, but again, that just isn't Apple.