Slashdot Mirror
EU Charges Samsung With Abusing Vital Telecoms Patent
Dupple sends this news from Reuters:
"The European Commission charged Samsung Electronics on Friday with abusing its dominant position in seeking to bar rival Apple from using a patent deemed essential to mobile phone use. The Commission sent a 'statement of objections' to the South Korean group, with its preliminary view that Samsung was not acting fairly. 'Intellectual property rights are an important cornerstone of the single market. However, such rights should not be misused when they are essential to implement industry standards, which bring huge benefits to businesses and consumers alike,' Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia said in statement."
Indeed, "such rights should not be misused". So why granting bogus patents on obvious features that lead to such abuses? They should fix the system, not try workarounds!
Apple tried to lowball the licensing at less than a quarter of the rate others were paying. Of course Samsung is going to say No to Apple.
I just hope they don't make Samsung post an apology on their website.
Never trust an atom. They make up everything.
Right on! Apple's competitors could give their phones sharp corners, or use a polkadot pentagonal shape instead of a black rectangular one.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
s/it/them
Comment on OSnews:
http://www.osnews.com/thread?546002
Laurence:
Apple sue nearly every manufacturer over generic shapes and actions, and the government just give a green light for dumb intellectual property to be registered.
Samsung sue Apple over actual inventions, and they get investigated.
This world is going to the shits.
(yes I know Samsung's patents were dubious because of being FRAND, and in an ideal world they shouldn't have used them. But in an ideal world they shouldn't have had to counter sue because Apple generic design patents).
I agree. This is what patents are for after all. Why only have shitty patents for things not important and punish people who've got the real stuff? Make sense? Remove them already.
Why does this stupid fandroid argument still get modded insightful on /.? Set aside the ignorance on the difference between design patents (which shouldn't really be patents in the first place, but have to be registered as patents because you can't copyright an industrial design for some reason) and FRAND patents. Apple did not generically patent all "rounded corners" as the fandroids claim. They patented which corners were rounded, and by how much. Compare the iPhone to the Nokia Lumia. Both are minimalist designs. Both have rounded corners. But the Lumia doesn't look anything like the iPhone, thus not infringing on the "rounded corners" design patent, while also clearly showing that having the exact same rounded corners as the iPhone is not a necessity for a smartphone.
This is fundamentally a FRAND issue. Samsung submitted their patents as FRAND, Apple did not. FRAND places limitations on what Samsung can do with their patents in exchange for a simplified licensing system that gives them long term royalties from virtually every mobile device manufacturer.
Anyhow, going after Apple with FRAND patents was always a risky strategy, and the EU charges are exactly why.
Not just that. There are EU standards forbidding the sale of gadgets with sharp corners.
The basic concept is essential vs non essential patents. Essential patents are supposed to be licenced out so as not to be used as a monopolization tool, where as stuff that isnt essential to compete , not so much.
Considering "rounded corners" wasnt even a patent, and its entirely possible to put out a phone with other shaped corners, then no this is not a legitimate comparison at all.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.