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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.'"
Wait, and wasn't Apple wanting something like $30/phone from Samsung for rounded corners, the bounce back patents, and a couple other small ones???
$1 is laughable when compared to the importance of the phone.
"No, no, no. Where do you get this from?"
Reality, that's how it works. I'm sorry you don't like that.
"What is this arbitrary "component" exclusion?"
It's not arbitrary. An aircraft radio transponder for example is in itself a complete product. Although you'd probably rarely want to you can use it in isolation of any plane so you'd pay the FRAND rates on that particular product rather than whatever plane you plug it into.
Besides, most of that tech is out of it's 20 year patent term anyway.
"Any device is going to use more than an handful of those. A percentage of the total cost is absurd."
The 2.5% rate is not per patent, it's for the full relevant portfolio of patents so said rate may well cover, say 50% of those patents, and another 2.5% to say Samsung, 40%, then say 0.5% to Nokia or whatever for the final 10%. The point being that it probably doesn't amount to much more than 5% to license for usage the entire wireless stack for a mobile phone whether wifi or gsm, 3g or lte. Most companies though mitigate the cost by cross-licensing their patents instead, so using this example, Samsung and Motorola probably just trade enough FRAND patents to not even bother charging each other. Apple's problem is that it wanted the FRAND patents free, but didn't want to give up any of it's useful patents like those related to multitouch in return. The percentage cost is irrelevant to most companies who aren't arrogant when it comes to patent negotiation.
"Nobody pays FRAND royalties like that."
Again, everyone does, and again, really, I'm sorry reality upsets you, but being upset about it doesn't change it. I'm also sorry you've clearly got no first hand experience of this topic, but ignorance of it doesn't make you right, it just makes you ignorant.