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Apple Suit Against Motorola Over FRAND Licensing Rates Dismissed
chill writes "A suit by Apple claiming that Motorola Mobility, now owned by Google, is seeking unreasonably high license fees for the use of patents on wireless technology has been thrown out by a judge in Madison, Wisconsin. Last week, Apple told the court it would pay up to $1 per device for a license to Motorola patents covering cellular and Wi-Fi technologies. Motorola Mobility was arguing for a royalty payment of 2.25 percent on each device."
From the article: "'At the final pretrial conference, I asked Apple to explain why it believed the court should determine a FRAND rate even though the rate may not resolve the parties' licensing or infringement disputes,' Crabb wrote in an order on Friday. 'I questioned whether it was appropriate for a court to undertake the complex task of determining a FRAND rate if the end result would be simply a suggestion that could be used later as a bargaining chip between the parties.'"
Lick my nuts
Apple also said it would ignore the court's order if it chose more than $1/device.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
I do not understand why the same company which sued others over some lousy rounded corners refuses to pay royalties over others' patents?
If I expect others to pay me over some lousy rounded corners I expect myself to play the same game - and will pay the royalty I owed to others when I use their patents.
At least, that was been taught to me by my elders.
Maybe Apple Inc has other kinds of "elders" - one who expect others to pay them while refusing to pay others.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Yea So far when it comes to these LTE patents it seems like Apple is unreasonable. But best way for samsung and google to battle apple in this case would be provide licensing costs that other phone makers pay for these patents. If Apple is trying to force a a lot lower rate. They apple can be seen as being unreasonable party if case gets to FTC. Apple was offered a # by samsung, Apple just walked away without even trying to negotiate, and LTE patent being only worth $1, per device seems kinda low and iffy. Looking at all these cases Apple is bring on against motorola and refusal to work with samsung on license option. Wonder how long it will be til both google and samsung say they got some litigation for apple, an FTC Import ban, Apple's constant court filing IMO is a clear case of apple not wanting to license these key patents anything that seen as reasonable by samsung/google's means. When it gets to point FTC sales ban comes in to pay against apple, all this crap of apple trying to avoid a license is gonna end up with their balls which Google/Samsung brand shotgun next to them.
Apple, to Court: Please remove the competition for us.
Court:Not possible; compete in the market on merit
Apple: But we are Apple, we need protection.
Court: Fuck off, and don't come back.
I do not understand why the same company which sued others over some lousy rounded corners refuses to pay royalties over others' patents?
If I expect others to pay me over some lousy rounded corners I expect myself to play the same game - and will pay the royalty I owed to others when I use their patents.
At least, that was been taught to me by my elders.
Maybe Apple Inc has other kinds of "elders" - one who expect others to pay them while refusing to pay others.
Thing is, the high ups in Apple are greedy, childish, petulant bastards, who love nothing more than twisting our laws to their benefit, and crying bloody murder when the court rulings don't go their way.
I don't blame them.
After 20 years of doing whatever the fuck you feel like, and having droves of idiots defending anything you do, regardless of how illegal, immoral and just plain insane your behavior and decisions are...
You'd lose a bit of self criticism too.
Apple has the same understanding of property as a cat - once they pee on it, it's theirs. It doesn't matter where an idea came from, once they pee on it/put in a iThing, it's forever Apple's property. It's unreasonable to them to pay anyone for anything they own/peed on, so the only possible value that would constitute FRAND to them is free.
How many judges would have spotted that suit for the Trojan horse it is? This one did, and we are all grateful for it. No, she's not going to get famous for holding The Next Apple Trial, and that's great. For once, we have a judge who just wants to do her job. And she's a judge who knows that her job isn't to generate bargaining chips in commercial contracts negotiations.
Thank you Judge Barbara Crabb for telling Apple that asking Mommy for permission after Daddy already said no isn't going to work.
Actually, from TFA, "Apple said that if the court found in Motorola's favor and instructed Apple to pay more than $1, Apple would pursue all possible appeals against the ruling." which isn't the same as ignoring it, unless you have a citation from somewhere else.
These views express my own personal opinions, not those of the other voices in my head
WHAT A LEGACY !!!!
On the other hand, it's about what you could realistically expect from
a guy who went to Auburn.
Jobs was the glue that held things together, now we all get to watch
the disintegration. There is no joy in this, but Tim Cook should be
ashamed enough that seppu-ku should be among the uppermost
options he considers, at least if he wants to be remembered as a man.
This is great. I can't wait to for Motorola cite precedent during the appeals of the Apple suit against Samsung when Apple was seeking $25+ per device for bullshit design patents like rounded corners. These FRAND patents are the real deal --backend stuff that actually took significant R&D capital to develop.
depending on who you are...
Fanboi site macrumors is nowadays providing more unbiased coverage of Apple
Rather than whine and complain about how every one is bashing Apple as you have repeatedly done throughout this page consider that for n people there are n+1 different stories. Apple is known for weaponising their patents and waging war against all that would stand against them. So in this case turnabout is not fair play? Sure they updated their product line, there has been much discussion/worship/bashing of the new iproducts this is a news site, this article was posted after the various product launches.
Consider also that the people that tend to visit slashdot are usually inteligent teck savvy people, some who like Apple products and some that detest them for various reasons. The moral of the story is put some content is your posts because all you sound like is the obsessed fan boy you accuse everyone else of being.
Because Apple has no new technology innovation.
Adding another incremental version number to the essentially identical product isn't revamping anything. It's just more fodder for the ADD fanbois that simply MUST have the latest iShiny.
I think Apple needs to stop being such a whiney bitch. They are the ones that started all this lawsuit bullshit (afaik), won a nice 1billion+ award in court.... and now they are complaining because they are using someone elses patents without permission and were caught on it. Guess it doesn't feel good when the company that seems to put so much stock in patents gets caught cheating and has their balls cut off and handed back to them. I think the 1 billion or whatever award they won should be nullified and just call it even.
LOL, just think how awesome their products "could" be if they didn't spend all the money on lawyers and suing competitors. If they put all that money into R&D and new products I bet they would have something actually good.
Well if Apple really only wants to pay $1.00 per phone, and Motorola says 2.25%, why not sell the phones for $44.44? Both companies would be happy, and so I suppose would the consumer.
That means Apple cannot re-file the case again.
It's disingenuous for them to say that they will do something without the court ordering it, when the entire reason the court is involved is that they refused to even make an initial offer, choosing instead to pick what they thought would be the best venue to sue in. Obviously, that didn't work out so well for them after the judge figured out what was going on.
So if you have examples of Google being as much of a dick as Apple, please do share.
...who....needs..... enemies. (Oh god I couldn't stop myself. What have I done?)
All the big corps originally thought patent portfolios were a great way to eliminate competition, especially smaller companies that couldn't afford to defend themselves.
So now I'm _really_ enjoying watching the big companies themselves getting repeatedly screwed directly as a result of their own greed and legal creations.
I wonder how long it will take before Apple or some other big American corp finally does a U turn and goes whining to the US Government and suddenly the patent law just happens to get reformed.
Demanding lower price than anybody else.
And this people is why America is doomed. On a tech site, filled supposedly with nerds, someone actually claims that in a piece of high tech equipment, design is more important for usefulness then the tech inside that allows it to do what it is supposed to do. Yes, rounded corners are more important for a phone then the tech that makes it able to make phone calls...
Oh, I am fully willing to accept that siddesu is just a moron who doesn't know anything about the patents in question but still, this is supposed to be a tech site. Claiming $30 bucks for design vs $1 for vital tech... it is clearly insane. Only managers who spend more on advertising then on development think that. Don't worry if it works, we just sell it with more advertising. It is actually lethal and has been proven so before, the first rise of the Japanese car industry happened over Detroit just adding more fins rather then innovating.
People don't read the full specs...
Yeah because when you are buying a phone, being able to make phone calls with it, that is just details. It is the styling! You might not be able to use it but damn, does it look good!
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Regardless of how well Apple is doing, it is PROFIT that counts.
An example for the brain-dead like Scowler: If I sold 1 dollar bills for 99 cent, my revenue would be sky high but I wouldn't last as a business for very long.
Idiots who judge company by revenue are the ones who lost big in the first Internet bubble.
The thing to remember is that once Nokia and Rim and Sony were unstoppable giants as well. Shit happens. Apple should knows this better then most, they nearly disappeared once before.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
looking at Apple's possible Contempt of Court action.
Since they didn't put those "dozens of other factors" and sued based on the front fascia of the Samsung phone (when the sodding great big "SAMSING" on the front is photoshopped out) having rounded corners.
None of these other "dozens of other factors" came up. Just round corners, flat front.
Samsung copied those designs from Sony, not from Apple. Samsung had designed their first phones that looked like the iPhone, before the iPhone was even announced.
Judge Koh wouldn't let them introduce this evidence in the farcical trial (where Apple won a >$1 billion judgement because the lead juror, who concealed his past litigation history with a Samsung subsidiary in voir dire, improperly influenced the jury and imposed his own erroneous ideas on them about patents and prior art instead of applying the proper legal standards as spelled out in the jury instructions... yeah, that is being appealed and there's zero chance that judgement will stand).
Apple is harming itself.
If you aren't part of the solution, then there is good money to be made prolonging the problem
Yes, this is a tech site filled with nerds. However, it's also a tech site filled with schills, astroturfers, and trolls.
I - as do many people - actually come here for the commentary more than the articles, but don't assume that it's unbiased by any stretch of the imagination.
So just out of curiosity, what would happen if Moto entered into a cross-licensing deal with Apple, trading wireless patents for design patents etc. Then one side's patents are declared invalid (I'd bet on design patents for this).
Do the terms of the licensing fall apart at that point and need to be re-negotiated, or does one party get screwed in terms of offering their patents in turn for something the other party doesn't own anymore?
Far bigger news is that the Federal government will be filing suit against Google for anti-trust violations over its abuse of FRAND patent licensing terms. The fact that Apple's suit has been tossed out will mean nothing, when the FTC files its own lawsuit.