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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."
There are many cases brought against European corporations. Most of those do not make the news across the pond, and many do not make the headlines here in the EU either. The same goes for antitrust cases brought against lesser-known US companies.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
It's because large US-based corporations doing business in the EU tend to try and get away with anti-competitive practices that are allowed to pass for "business as usual" in the US, where there is a much more permissive the-market-will-regulate-itself attitude.
It makes headlines because we in the EU try to keep companies from pulling this shit over here, and largely it works.
There are numerous antitrust enforcements or investigations against European companies. Even ones with very hefty fines. The reason you don't hear about it is that this mostly isn't picked up by non European news agencies.
It isn't about it are "American" companies if that is what you are insinuating. I personally think it also has to do that in America companies get a way with a lot more (America is led by corporations imho) in the states and then they are confronted with a continent that put them more on a leash to more or less protect their citizens.
The warranty thing with Apple and Europe is for me a class book example.
Motorola brought this on themselves. When you attempt to unfairly abuse FRAND patents against your market competition, you're eventually going to be investigated for anticompetitive behaviour. They abused their FRAND patents. They're being investigated. And they're going to be found guilty of anticompetitive behaviour and everyone knows it.
And we should be happy about that.
It doesn't matter what you think of Motorola, Apple, Microsoft, Google, or any other company. You may like or hate any of those companies - it doesn't matter. We should all be happy that Motorola's actions are going to be punished because this is precisely the sort of thing that limits innovation in an industry. This isn't about patents limiting innovation - this is about FRAND patents that are essential for involvement in an industry.
If you don't know what FRAND patents are, you should make an effort to understand them because understanding them is vital to understanding this situation.
FRAND patents are essential patents that are part of an industry standard that MUST be licensed to ANYONE who wishes to license them at _Fair, Reasonable, and Non Discriminatory_ rates. When a company gets a patent included in an industry standard, they agree to license them under FRAND terms.
Motorola's actions have not been Fair, Reasonable, nor Non Discriminatory. They have targeted specific companies (that's discriminatory) with excessive licensing demands (ranging from 2.25% up to "your entire non-FRAND patent portfolio" which is not reasonable), all of which is not fair.
You don't have to like or hate any company involved in this to recognize that Motorola is abusing their FRAND patents and everyone should want them to be punished for doing so.
They have abused their FRAND patents. They are being investigated. They will be found guilty of anticompetitive behaviour.
They overplayed their hand and now they are going to face the consequences.
Actually do expensive research and get patents that mean something, and they will label them "standards essential"...
Um, you do realize that Motorola submitted those patents for inclusion in the industry standard and were accepted into the standard in return for an agreement to license them for FRAND terms. They weren't labeled, against their will, standards essential - they asked to be included in the industry standard.
Motorola isn't the victim here.
Europe does a lot of stuff I like and a lot of stuff I don't like.
What frustrates me is mankind's desire to reinvent the wheel.
We have a fight in America over nationalized healthcare. Obamacare is a half-assed mix between true socialized healthcare like what is in pretty much every European country and our private system. Why reinvent the wheel when we can just copy what has, say, already been working quite well for the UK since the end of World War 2?
We have issues in our schools with... everything. We're looking at more tests and more hours in school like Asian countries that are often near the top of world rankings. Yet Finland is also very much near the top in those rankings but with shorter school hours and more professional teachers. They are doing something quite right and have been for some time. Why don't we have the people who designed this system coming over here and unfucking ours?
I could go on with many more examples. I wish I could say "They can do it, so we should be able to do it as well!" and have someone respond "Right, let's find out how they did it!" rather than "Let's stubbornly try to figure it out ourselves and give private interests the opportunity to corrupt the system!" Related to business, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is a great idea that gets nowhere because they are essentially stripped of any real power. Private interests got their hands in the cookie jar.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
Why is it that the only antitrust enforcement I hear about in the EU is against non-EU based companies?
Technically every enforcement action is against an EU based corporation - in order to legally do trade within the EU, you need an EU corporate presence. The European Commission regulates violations of trade law within the EU. The EU didn't levy fines against Microsoft US for antitrust violations within the borders of the United States, it levied fines against Microsoft Europe for antitrust violations within the EU borders.
I would guess that you haven't heard about other enforcement actions because you don't read the EU antitrust news? You chose to read US oriented news, which doesn't report on enforcement actions of foreign regulatory bodies against foreign companies? Also, the EU is made up of many nation states, each of which has its own antitrust regulatory body. The EU only gets involved in antitrust when the scale of the illegal activity exceeds the ability of the national courts to handle, or where the national courts have erred or require clarification. This is usually difficult cases, or those with international scope that involve large transnational corporations. EU-level enforcement actions are, by their nature, more likely to be against a large corporation trading internationally, which for tax and trade reasons may well be headquartered in the U.S. (although increasingly companies are choosing to be headquartered in Ireland or Luxembourg for tax purposes, see Facebook, Twitter, etc.).
Is it really that case that no corporations inside the EU are big enough to be anti-competitive?
The EU have issued over €12 billion of fines in the last 5 years against illegal cartels. How many of those cases did you read about in the U.S. press? This is not some conspiracy - it is entirely understandable, their readers (Americans) generally don't care about the EU fining a Belgian glass manufacturer, or Frankfurt Airport. They only feel an emotional connection when the target of the fine is the subsidiary of a U.S. corporation.
2011/03/03 Siemens AG fined €397 million by EU antitrust
2012/03/29 Telefonica fined €152 million.
2011/10/25 Solvay fined €23 million
2011/06/22 Telekomunikacja Polska S.A €127 million
2008/11/12 Largest every cartel fine from the EU - over €1.3 billion against a Japanese/US/English/Belgian cartel.
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
:. Ultimate Control Dedicated/VM Servers
Well, for one thing, don't model your healthcare on the UK system. It's not exactly a pinnacle of socialized healthcare today. In fact there are a lot of problems with the UK system, not necessarily related to socialized healthcare as a whole. I would urge you to look to Scandinavian countries, such as Finland, Sweden and Denmark, for models on which a good healthcare system can be built. I live in Finland and can attest to both the good education system (do I have to mention that university education is *free*?) and a working socialized healthcare system where you don't end up in the poorhouse when you get ill. Prescriptions drugs cost a fraction of what they do in the US, and if you have a chronic illness that requires continuous medication, once you reach a very reasonable yearly cap, everything else above that is free.
As a sidenote, since you brought it up, the Finnish education system is not based on rote memorization and testing of students to gauge progress. It's based on the teacher actually teaching the students (wow, innovative concept!) and taking the needs of each student into account. Each student is allowed to learn at their own pace, it's not forcing the entire class to learn at one speed and fuck the ones who can't keep up. It's also more objective based and learning of problem-solving skills that will be useful in a real job.
I am very familiar with the US and Finnish systems, I'm an American living in Finland for 12 years. I bet you can guess which I prefer...
Because the US would never get away with passing such legislation in the path of the well-entrenched and well-funded empires that already exist -- especially when they can bill it as "communist" in the press to garner instant public disapproval.
So they're stuck with such half-assed attempts that don't really please anybody, but are close enough to status quo that they also don't piss off the powerful people and organizations (or at least, not enough to keep fighting it.)
But on the other hand, a half-assed measure is better than none at all. If nothing else, it at least opens the door to the possibility of further change in the future. One step at a time.