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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.'"
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.
Motorola did offer to license at a FRAND rate. This is normally followed by a negotiation (based on things like is the licensee offering a license to important patents in return), but Apple declined to negotiate. Note that "FRAND" does not mean "whatever rate the licensee wants to pay".
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.
Moto offered a price. Apple thought it was too high and refused to negotiate. Then they sued. They asked the court to set the rate. The court was skeptical, thought the bargaining should be between the companies, but was will to go to trial anyways. Then Apple told the court that Moto should be bound by the court's decision, but that if the rate was too high, Apple would NOT be bound to the decision. Oh, and whatever the rate is, Apple only wants it to apply going forward. All the past patent violations should be free. The court dismissed the suit with prejudice.
Which part was Apple treated unfairly? The initial offer? Apple should go to eBay and sue every seller with a high "Buy it Now" price. Is it unfair to Apple to ask them to pay for years of past violations?
It is true that Apple uses the Moto-licensed Qualcomm MDM6610 chips in the iPhone 4S (which was explicitly excluded from Moto's suit in Germany), but why would that license apply to other iPhones that aren't using the MDM6610 chips (the iPhones that Moto actually sued over)? Or is that unfair to Apple, too?
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
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.