Study: Royalty Charges Almost On Par With Component Costs For Smartphones

Bismillah (993337) writes "An interesting study by WilmerHale lawyers and Intel's assistant general counsel Ann Armstrong looked into how much royalty payments and demands actually amount to per device, and found the cost so high it threatens industry profitability and competitiveness. 'As the bank robber Willie Sutton is reported to have said, he robbed banks 'because that's where the money is' - so too of smartphones for patent holders,' the authors wrote."

Comments

Re:so apple and samsung should just research it al

[Mordok-DestroyerOfWo]

and then they won't pay any royalties just do all the R&D for the thousands of patents that cover antennas, modulation, encryption, LTE, beam forming the signal and everything else it takes for a modern phone to work

And yet if they did reinvent the wheel, they'd get sued into oblivion by these companies nontheless. With the speed at wihch technology progresses increasing as drastically as it has been, we need to rethink the we we grant patents. Software patents need to pass the CS201 stink test (if a CS201 student can figure it out, it ain't novel), and important hardware patents should have a shorter lifespan.

Patents and Copyrights are obsolete.

[ReekRend]

They have no place in the modern world, if they ever had a place at all. Creating art is a privilege and invention is the nature of intelligence, they will happen just fine without greed as the motivation. Down with unfettered capitalism, live like rational humans instead of psychopaths.

Re:Shoulders of giants

[king neckbeard]

You do realize that 'standing on the shoulder of giants' is far more of an anti-patent notion than a pro-patent one, right?

Re:The people that invent things must be compensat

[wbr1]

Interesting fact. In america , recipes are not subject to copyright or patent. General mills, and other cereal makers, as well as other food companies rely on jealously guarded trade secrets. This does not stop generic copy cat foods (is store brand sodas and generic cereals) from being made. In fact they proliferate. Some are indistinguishable or better than the original. Some are junk.

This is the market in operation. Stopping patents will not slow or stop innovation, it will spur some as companies need to invent to differentiate from the rest. Then when they are copied, it continues. In this sense, necessity is the mother of new invention. The necessity of being unique and valuable Ina sea of clones.