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Aussie Judge Declares Apple-Samsung Patent Battles "Ridiculous"
New submitter Ahab's compliments writes "Score another point for sensible judges — the judge in point wants to know why this dispute over the wireless technologies developed by Samsung and used by Apple shouldn't be settled through mediation. 'Why on earth are these proceedings going ahead?' Bennett asked the lawyers in court today. 'It's just ridiculous.' The judge also rejected a request to hear the various patent infringement claims from either side in separate cases."
Keep in mind Federal Court Justice Annabelle Bennett was referring to why this wasn't in mediation, that's it.
it's curious that perhaps the change we've all wanted for so long is not coming from a foundation, or lobby group, or grassroots uprising, but just from a bunch of annoyed judges who don't particularly enjoy these cases or the wasted time they come with.
I think the judge's intent, especially in refusing to separate the cases, is to wrestle both parties into playing nice, stopping their tantrums, and actually trying to reach a reasonable compromise.
In other words, emphasizing the "civil" in "civil court".
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Apple refused to pay a license fee for the technology that allows phones to conduct multiple tasks including taking calls while uploading photos to the internet, Samsung's lawyer Neil Young said at the start of the trial. Apple was willing to pay and Samsung refused, the Cupertino, California-based company's lawyer Stephen Burley said.
Apple says "we were willing to pay a license fee, but they wouldn't take it," and Samsung says "they refused to pay a fee." Translation: Apple was okay with paying, but not the price that Samsung wanted. So this isn't so much a patent dispute, as it is just an argument over a license fee... in which case, yes, mediation would be a lot more reasonable.
Samsung is just defending themselves. If someone attacks you, and you hit them back in an attempt to get them to stop, I'm not going to call you a violent person.
Boycott Apple.
It is absurd if a patent set up in the first country must be recognised in a second country, but the second country does not have the power to declare an invalidation which is also recognised in the first.
The implication is that it is more important to create patents (no matter how absurd they are) than to repeal bad patents.
There are many problems of this sort with inter-state EU legislation, too.
Indeed. Congratulations on spotting one of the many imbalances in the current system.
Indeed this is the status quo: if something is patented in one country, other countries have agreed that they too will honor the patent. Yet if something is *invalidated* in one country, there is no requirement that this invalidation is honored elsewhere. And this is true despite it being easy, simple and cheap to get a patent, compared to the enormous expense and close scrutiny that goes into getting one invalidated.
In other news: why does the berne convention only specify that countries should have a minimum length of copyright, and that countries that have too *short* protection are in violation - while saying nothing at all about the maximum duration and allowing countries to set copyright to a million years with no issues. Where's the -balance- in that ?
Here we go with another Apple fanboy trotting out the FRAND argument. While the terms of FRAND agreements aren't usually disclosed, it is widely thought that part of the price of a FRAND license is a cross-license patent agreement. Apple, however, doesn't want to cross-license their patents, instead they want to license the FRAND patents by paying slightly more than other companies who did cross-license have paid. They are using the court system to pressure the owners of FRAND patents into such an arrangement. They appear to be doing this because for some reason they feel entitled to be able to use the complex technologies that allow phones to discover proximity to towers, determine the closest tower, connect to the tower, seamlessly transition to other towers, and many other difficult tasks for very little compensation while they wish to retain the right to sue the companies that developed those technologies over Apple's patents for slide to unlock and parsing phone numbers. And somehow Apple fanboys have deluded themselves into thinking that this is Fair and Reasonable to the patent holders of wireless technologies as well as Non-Discriminatory despite the fact that all other FRAND license agreements for those same patents likely required cross-licensing a vast war chest of patents.
There's your fanboyism showing itself. If by "clone" you mean make a device whose entire functionality depends on being a touchscreen and having such groundbreaking features as rounded corners, phone number parsing, and slide to unlock, then yes Samsung has cloned Apple's products. I'll tell you what: I will concede that Samsung is cloning Apple's products if you can go into an electronics store and identify every flat-panel television in that store by brand without looking at the logo. Until then, stop making this argument as it just makes you look stupid.
Point of FRAND is that anyone can walk up to patent holder and get a license for the standard technology on same terms as everyone else.
I think FRAND allows you to get a license for the standard technology on FAIR terms, not the SAME terms as everyone else. If you enter the FRAND agreement w/o a patent portfolio to add to FRAND, it seems fair to me that you should pay more than those who do. They did the work and spent money to develop the technology used in 3G and covered by the patents. If you did not, pay more to those who did.
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Things are paid for by whatever the parties agree to. This may be money, goods, services, or something more creative.
Nobody is trading ownership of intellectual property in these agreements. They are simply promising not to sue each other if they happen their products happen to implement something that the other party has patented.
On what planet did I suggest anything even remotely close to Apple giving up a $100B business? I simply suggested that it is fair that Apple agrees to pay a small fee per device sold and promises not to sue over any functional patents that they own in exchange for using the technologies covered by Samsung's FRAND patents - just like all of the other licensees presumably have done.
Most of Apple's patents are related to software and cover broad, abstract, and trivial concepts, all of which should make them unpatentable. The only country absurd enough to grant these patents is the U.S. and if the USPTO ever gets its act together, these patents could go away overnight. Samsung is merely trying to use the FRAND patents to protect itself from Apple's onslaught of lawsuits over these frivolous patents.
You mean that FRAND patent counter-suit to Apple's "you copied us" suit? You have a funny definition of "attacking" if it includes defensive counter-suits.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal