Slashdot Mirror
Samsung Offers Patent Cease-Fire in EU
dryriver sends this quote from the BBC:
"Samsung has said that it will stop taking rivals to court [in the E.U.] over certain patent infringements for the next five years. The white flag in the patent battle has been raised because the South Korean electronics firm faces a huge fine for alleged abuses of the system. The move could help end a long-running patent war between the world's largest mobile makers. The E.U. said that a resolution would bring 'clarity to the industry'. 'Samsung has offered to abstain from seeking injunctions for mobile SEPs (standard essential patents) for a period of five years against any company that agrees to a particular licensing framework,' the European Commission said in a statement. Standard essential patents refer to inventions recognised as being critical to implementing an industry standard technology. Examples of such technologies include the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS), a cellular standard at the heart of 3G data; and H.264, a video compression format used by YouTube, Blu-ray disks and Adobe Flash Player among others. The E.U. had accused the Samsung of stifling competition by bringing a series of SEP lawsuits against Apple and other rivals."
Oh grow up.
Apple's patents can all be worked around. However Standards Essential Patents (as indicated by their very name) cannot.
This is why any company that abuses the ones they have (such as Samsung) is a big deal.
Uuh, yeah, and what happpens after those five years? Your competitors have taken advantage of those five years to freely produce products with these patents, and all of a sudden your promise of no legal action runs out. Do they A) completely dump all of those products and start equivalent technologies from scratch, B) grudgingly stump up for renewed licenses or C) give Samsung the finger and get sued to bits for no longer having a license?
You're basically promising a five year grace period to make money while they can before you start collecting on that expanded portfolio of products which their customers are now quite used to thank you very much.
I'm no fan of the patent wars, but if Samsung played by the rules and filed for patents on the technology before somebody else did, then I don't see how they can be fined for using the legal leverage that goes along with it.
I agree, so maybe it's the system that's broken, and the EU is trying to patch around it (however, since they're still politicians, they most likely won't fix the underlying issue).
How expensive would phones be if micro USB were a single manufacturer's spec to be licensed rather than some industry-agreed standard?
Just like it happened with FireWire, nobody would use it.
I'm no fan of the patent wars, but if Samsung played by the rules...
Yeah, but the rules for Standards Essential Patents are a bit different, because anti-competitive behaviour laws enter the picture much more easily. And then things quickly get very complicated, I think the general intent of EU here is: play fair with SEP, agree on a fair licensing price, work it out, or else...
and the solution that would have been used is to invalidate the patents by the EU (nuclear option) if Samsung did not quit abusing. They've also been put on notice that any further abuse of SEP's will result in the patent being invalidated by the EU, thus ending any and all lawsuits in regards to said patents.
This has the benefit of informing the Corps that Abuse of the Courts and the System will no longer be tolerated while reducing the time and money wasted not only by the courts but the victims of the abuse. It does not impact lawyers directly other then by telling them that the gravy train has ended in the EU.
Now if the damn courts in the United States along with the congress would implement the same deal. Keeps patents valid while fixing the major problem with the system as it stands.
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
retard much? look at the antitrust case over agency model pricing.
The Korean govt. will likely put some debilitating tariffs and import restrictions in place that pertain to EU goods in order to force the same ends that the patent wars were meant to accomplish.
The EU is about to notice that the patent system is broken and before they take the next step and even consider fixing it, we'll just lie low 'til they got there attention elsewhere, the LAST thing we need is them finding out that 9 out of 10 of our patents are for trivialities which could lead them to invalidate them.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
"We agree to stop abusing SEP patents for five years. And then, once those five years have passed, we will return to abusing them as we have which lead us to this point."
How about Samsung stop abusing SEP patents and honour their FRAND promises. Period.
They're offer appears nice, on the face of things, but it is hollow in the long run. The EU response should be simple - you've broken your FRAND promises and abused your SEP patents. You are fined an enormous amount and if it happens again, you will be fined an enormous amount again until you understand that FRAND promises are vital to the industry's ability to grow and develop and breaking those promises undermines the entire foundation of Standards Essential Patents. Stop abusing them - drop every single SEP-based lawsuit against every manufacturer and do not launch another lawsuit seeking damages nor injunctions for SEP patents ever again - or be fined. Period.
So long as manufacturers can wield SEP patents that are covered by FRAND promises as a weapon, there's serious damage being done to the industry. If you want to use your patent as a weapon against your fellow manufacturers, don't offer them up to a standards body for inclusion in an industry standard and don't promise to license them under FRAND terms. You are under no obligation to do so. This situation isn't forced upon you. There are reasons companies want their patents in an industry standard, even with the FRAND limitations, and there are reasons companies want to keep patents close to their chest. Pick one. You can't have both. Attempting to have both is an abuse of SEP patents and a breach of FRAND promises.
Samsung has offered to abstain from seeking injunctions for mobile SEPs (standard essential patents) for a period of five years against any company that agrees to a particular licensing framework
Which is basically how it works now.
So they stop the abuse, once. Now change the system to stop ALL the abuse. Make mandatory generic licensing a requirement of the patent system. And set the royalty rates to prevent abuse (FRAND). This is the only way to allow the inventor to benefit but without holding back civilization by the unreasonable.
Never abused SEP patents covered by FRAND promises. No. They haven't.
What I'm wondering, is if the patents are so essential to an industry, why doesn't the government just come in and say "Hey Samsung, we're taking your patent. You are free to continue to use it without paying us any licensing fees, but we will also license it out to who ever we choose"? What is the benefit of letting Samsung keep the patent vs the method I just described?
Some people consider nationalisation of private property to be a pretty drastic measure.
-- Using the preview button since 2005
...prisoner's dilemma. Throwing your patents under FRAND means they are essentially not yours anymore; sure, you get paid something, but because of how "fair and reasonable" can be interpreted, it's probably really difficult to enforce anything. HOWEVER, if you do not do that, another company might offer a FRAND patent and turn that into an industry standard instead. And then you end up with a worthless patent.
It's good to know all our standards are only based on companies unable/unwilling to cooperate properly.
nd the solution that would have been used is to invalidate the patents by the EU (nuclear option) if Samsung did not quit abusing.
I think the threat of a 13.7 BILLION Euro fine was slightly more nuclear. Plus obviously any attempt to enforce these patents would be illegal, no matter whether the patents were valid or not.
What I'm wondering, is if the patents are so essential to an industry, why doesn't the government just come in and say "Hey Samsung, we're taking your patent. You are free to continue to use it without paying us any licensing fees, but we will also license it out to who ever we choose"? What is the benefit of letting Samsung keep the patent vs the method I just described?
No, Samsung is supposed to get a fair and reasonable license fee for these patents. And standard essential patents are not standard essential by magic. They are standard essential because a standard was created that uses the patent, and the patent holder agreed to it being included in the standard.
a design (eg trade dress) patent is different from a "invention" patent, and should not be talked about as if they were the same thing.
Some people consider nationalisation of private property to be a pretty drastic measure.
Sure, and that would be relevant if we were talking about private property, as opposed to patents.
On the other hand, far too many people don't seem to have a problem with nationalization of actual private property in the form of, say, taxable income, so perhaps the underlying premise is incorrect. If they can nationalize part of your income, which is your by natural right, they can certainly nationalize a few patents which only exist by their say-so in the first place.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
The point of the patent sytem is not to make people pay royalties, but to create an incentive for inventors -- if the inventor gets neither the royalties (by licensing the patent) nor the monopoly (by not licensing the patent), there's no incentive, no matter whether those using the patented invention make royalty payments to some other entity or not.
If you've already taken away the inventor's incentive, what possible reason is there for the government's licensing fee?
There (probably) are no laws which would allow that... I hope so at least.
You've actually just made the case against Samsung.
Samsung did some really good technical work, which almost everyone wanted to copy, so they agreed that the patents involved were "Standards Essential Patents" which would be licensed to everyone cheap. Changing their minds and saying "OK, everybody bat Apple can use those patents," was simply something they agreed they weren't allowed to do when they agreed to have the patents declared standards. Basically they were trying to force their #1 competitor out of their #1 market, and the legal system is not supposed to tolerate that shit. Just look at Apple and it's conviction for eBook price-fixing.
OTOH Apple did a bunch of decent technical work, and some truly mind-blowing design work. Then they sued people on the basis of the design patents. Since they never agreed not to do that, and it was trivial for Samsung to design it's way around said patents once they realized that courts enforce design patents, Samsung got it's ass reamed in court and nobody is worried that Samsung will be forced out of the smartphone market.
Strictly speaking it's not a new price. It's the old price they have always been legally required to charge their competitors for these particular patents.
The entire issue here is that they agreed to license these patents on very liberal terms as a way to get everyone using their tech, and then when they realized that one of their competitors had better tech then them (Apple) they tried to take that deal away from that competitor.
Legally, patents are property. That doesn't mean I agree or disagree with the concept of intellectual property - more it's a different discussion. The equivocation you've drawn, with taxes and patents, can lead down a pretty dark road. Why should anyone be allowed to own anything that has both existed before and will exist long after the demise of the property holder?
-- Using the preview button since 2005
It the first time for a while I consider something done by European Commission as good. But I wonder what law is used to define the abuse and to allow a fine. Perhaps it could be reused somewhere else.
It is not that Samsung's patents are "so essential" it is that Samsung chose to share their patents in the definition of a standard. In doing so they committed to licensing only those patents under FRAND terms. The remainder of their patent portfolio is theirs to license, or not, as they please. They may have an essential patent to curved glass and Apple will never be able to use it, that is fine. This only applies to the patents that were submitted to a standards pool with a contractual obligation to non-discriminatory licensing.
On the other hand, far too many people don't seem to have a problem with nationalization of actual private property in the form of, say, taxable income, so perhaps the underlying premise is incorrect. If they can nationalize part of your income, which is your by natural right, they can certainly nationalize a few patents which only exist by their say-so in the first place.
Something just doesn't sit right in your analogy - in this case, nationalization of "property/cash" (aka tax) isn't a judicial punitive measure, it's a generally agreed-upon, and well known code. The best way is for them to both fine Samsung and invalidate their patents. That's well in their power, since patents are just government granted monopolies (supposedly time-limited, but there are ways around that).
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
OTOH Apple did a bunch of decent technical work, and some truly mind-blowing design work. Then they sued people on the basis of the design patents. Since they never agreed not to do that, and it was trivial for Samsung to design it's way around said patents once they realized that courts enforce design patents, Samsung got it's ass reamed in court and nobody is worried that Samsung will be forced out of the smartphone market.
As an example of working around design patents, look at Samsung Galaxy S3 and later. You always hear the "Apple patented rounded rectangles" brigade screaming, but fact is that the S3 with its rounded corners does _not_ infringe on Apple's design patent, and Samsung actually has its own "rounded corner" design patent for the S3, so if Apple (fat chance) or anyone else copied it, Samsung could successfully sue them.
It looks like they should have waited.
That's an incredibly tortured attempt to bring two unrelated fields together - as you well know from your need to use quotes.
-- Using the preview button since 2005
A design patent covers the appearance of a product only, so it's really more like a trademark. The goal is to protect their signature look from copying. You don't have to invent new technology to get around the patents, you just have to make it look different.
Samsung did some really good technical work, which almost everyone wanted to copy, so they agreed that the patents involved were "Standards Essential Patents"...
That's not quite accurate.
Samsung did some really good technical R&D work. The industry's standards body was establishing an industry standard and asked companies to suggest ideas for inclusion in this standard. Samsung, along with other companies, offered their technology into this industry standards process, all with the promise of offering their patents under FRAND terms. The standard was established.
The patents didn't become a Standards Essential Patent because everyone used it. It became SEP because Samsung offered it for use in the industry standard technology _AND THEN_ everyone used it.
The most common misconception on Slashdot is that Samsung is being punished for making a popular patent that became an industry standard. It is very important to understand that this is not the case. They _offered_ their patents up for inclusion in a standards setting process and everyone uses those patents now because they were accepted into the technology. They are popular patents _because_ they were included into the standards essential technology.
The rest of your post, however, is spot-on.
I have to agree there. Patent law as it applies to an inventor as opposed to a corporation, which is lifeless, and potentially very long lived (read: centuries), has twisted the original intent of a patent and it's purpose. As to governments taking a FRAND patent from the owner, it would also discourage any company from entering their patents as FRAND patents. This is done voluntarily now. If a government forced a company to surrender such patents, then the industry overall would suffer.
Misguided android fanboi defenses aside, a FRAND patent is an entirely different animal. Samsung was demanding cross licensing of choice non-frand patents from competitors in order to license FRAND, and they were caught, and reprimanded. This I agree with completely. They were also caught with confidential court documents, leveraging the licensing info in them against competitors. You would do better to choose a better cause to champion. They are hardly the industry leader in exceptional and above-board behavior.
Requiring cross licensing as a condition of licensing a FRAND would violate the (F)air and (Reasonable) piece of the puzzle. By their very nature, only one company can own a patent, so every person wanting to license FRAND patents can't offer the same cross licensing. Allowing a FRAND owner to pick and choose the cross licensed patents they require in order to license a FRAND patent is by it's very nature, anticompetitive. Although a company might opt to cross license, it cannot be made a condition of licensing a FRAND patent.
It would require a company surrender any competitive via surrendering their standard patents in order to cross license FRAND patents. This is exactly what Samsung was doing. Samsung was slapped down for extorting from competitors via it's FRAND patents in order for them to enter the market.
Apple's patents can all be worked around.
Oh, really?
"Round Corners"
How are you going to design around that one Sherlock?
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc