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Obama Administration Overrules iPhone Trade Ban
Back in June, the U.S. International Trade Commission issued an import ban on the iPhone 4 and iPad 2 3G due to patent violations. Now, the White House has exercised its privilege to overrule the ban. In his letter to the ITC (PDF), Ambassador Michael Froman said 'he was not making a decision about the merits of Samsung's case, or its right to seek compensation. Rather, he emphasized that because the patent in question was now a widely held technology standard, banning the products in question would be too disruptive to consumers and the economy.' This is the first time an ITC decision has been overruled since 1987.
Rather, he emphasized that because the patent in question was now a widely held technology standard, banning the products in question would be too disruptive to consumers and the economy
That argument could be used to sooooo many other patent litigations, and somehow never is, except when the affected part is a big American company.
Actually, only recently have big corporations started trying to use standards-essential patents as tools of corporate warfare. The EU is investigating Samsung for just this kind of behavior.
"No, no, no. Don't tug on that. You never know what it might be attached to."
Well, they often seem to like to put them before even the US constitution...
Overreaching surveillance by NSA with PRISM and torture in Guantanamo bay are not fiction.
Just saying it like it are.
Between this and the PRISM bullshit, the US just went on my "don't buy from" list. Congratulations, your government has absolutely no regard for honour or fair play.
US based corporation? You mean the one publicly traded on the stock exchange, with manufacturing facilities in China? The one that ships iPhones and iPads directly from China? Or is it because they have an office in Cupertino that you consider them US based?
But where is the value added? Every other phone maker in the world makes their phones in the exact same factories in China. Why aren't they all worth the same amount? Almost every dollar of value added over a simple sum of the cost of the parts (plus a couple dollars for assembly) is added in California. And even after the sale, Apple's call centers are all in the US to help get them their astronomical satisfaction numbers. Apple's about as US-based a corporation as you can get in that industry.
E pluribus unum
Actually a lot of the engineering is done in Asia:
* The screen is designed and built by Sharp in Japan.
* The CPU and SoC is designed and built by Samsung and/or Exynos in Korea.
* The Plastic tooling and dies are designed by a subcontractor to Hon Hai in Shen Zhen from designs for the part from Apple or a subcontractor in California (or possibly elsewhere)
* The motion estimation parts are designed by Intersil in California
* The production system is designed and managed by Hon Hai in Shen Zhen
* The Flash is designed by Samsung or Micron in Korea or Taiwan
It's safe to say it is an international collaboration, but they don't say that, they just say "Designed by Apple in California".
The obsession with where the widget is made is because some people have some foresight and can see that once you give all your manufacturing capability (the hard bit) to another country, it won't take that long for that country to figure out the design (the easy bit), and cut you out of the loop. In fact this happened and now look at the Samsung Galaxy and all the Chinese Android devices (which are nearly as good and much, much cheaper). I can buy a near-equivalent to a Galaxy tablet for US$99 from Ali Express.
Almost every dollar of value added over a simple sum of the cost of the parts (plus a couple dollars for assembly) is added in California.
Apple has filed legal documents that say that's untrue, and in May Tim Cook testified in front of The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations where he reiterated that a large percentage of the dollar value added by Apple is added in Ireland.