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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.'"
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 !
If Steve Jobs were alive, he'd have RDFed the judge into agreeing with him.
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.
Apple was a thug long before Steve Jobs declared thermonuclear war, but Jobs was a master at concealing that. Tim Cook isn't. This is one of several reasons that it is just wonderful for the rest of us that Tim Cook now runs Apple.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
So making the phone look good is more important than making the phone a phone? Do iPod Touch's outsell iPhones?
But their offer is an implication their devices willfully infringe the patents. They're refusing to pay the $1 per device on the millions of devices they agree infringe on Motorola's patents but have already sold and profited from.
The "some that might argue" that are fools ignorant of the communications technology in cellular phones. Apple abuses their FRAND free ride on the significant communications R&D that has taken place over the last 20 years and tries to gouge everyone else on artsy fartsy design and software patents that wouldn't exist without the complicity of clueless patent examiners.
Not really, they don't make their own baseband chips, they buy from someone else who makes them and has been part of that R&D effort over the last 20 years.
I hear what you're trying to say, but its just not true since they mostly use Qualcomm's chips.
While I don't agree with patents like Apple is using in general, I'm still kind of with Apple on the Samsung thing as it was CLEARLY intended to look like an iDevice in its original form.
Apple's patent shit does piss me off in that I realize one of the reasons I dislike Android's 'feel' is because Apple patented the bounce back UI feeling thingy at the end of scrolling. When I tried the Nexus 7 I found it extremely frustrating as I was used to the iOS feel of scrolling and thought it was really retarded of Android to not do the same ... until I found out they couldn't.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
While I don't agree with patents like Apple is using in general, I'm still kind of with Apple on the Samsung thing as it was CLEARLY intended to look like an iDevice in its original form.
That's not clear at all. It was designed to look like a modern fashion phone. It could equally have been designed to look like an LG Prada, and in fact, given the extra buttons and Samsung logo, the Samsung phones are much closer to that than an iPhone. The iPhone was clearly also designed to look a bit like a Prada. The fact that the two are similar does not have to mean that there is any direct design link whatsoever.
The key thing to understand is that some level of copying is legitimate here. Car gear shifts all look identical so that you can use them easily. Phones dialpads look similar so you can dial in the same way. Modern monitors mostly have the buttons hidden in the bottom right so they look cool but you can still find them. All of next years clothes will have the set of colours which are currently being shown by the top designers. Part of this is functional and part of this is trying to define expectation through a common look.
Everyone copies and that's okay. It wouldn't be okay if the products were indistinguishable, but they weren't. Apple had a registered design. They could expect protection of that, and Samsung didn't use it. Apple could expect copyrights to mean Samsung would not to do a literal copy of their design and they did not. Anything more is just sour grapes.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
That's the point. It's not a phone, just like the iPhone would not be a phone without the patents that Apple is refusing to pay more than a pittance for.
They asked massive amounts for patents which are not essential to making a phone. It stands to reason that the patents required to make it a phone are worth at least a tiny bit more.
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.
You're laughing, but here in Germany the GEMA (fills in for the RIAA in Germany) is charging the educators at Kindergartens for the songs they sing with the kids.
Computer simulation made easy -- LibGeoDecomp