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Apple To Pay Ericsson Patent Royalties On iPhones and iPads (cio.com)

Posted by samzenpus on from the pay-up dept.

itwbennett writes: In settlement of a long-standing dispute over patents that Ericsson considers essential to the implementation of a number of mobile communications standards, including GSM, the 3G standard UMTS and LTE, Apple has agreed to pay Ericsson royalties on sales of iPhones and iPads. While the companies would not disclose further details of their agreement, Ericsson gave a hint about its value. For the full year 2015, Ericsson predicts its intellectual property rights revenue will amount to between 13 billion and 14 billion Swedish krona ($1.64 billion). In comparison, it reported IPR revenue of 10.6 billion krona for the full year 2014, including a 4.2 billion krona lump sum in settlement of a similar global dispute with Samsung Electronics.

8 of 75 comments (clear)

  1. Erickson actually crreated by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Erickson actually paid for the R&D to create something new, unlike curved edges and a single button that Apple patented. Fuck Apple.

    1. Re:Erickson actually crreated by danbob999 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      They also patented the "bounce" effect of the picture gallery app when you reach the end.

    2. Re:Erickson actually crreated by ewibble · · Score: 3, Insightful

      That is the point, 1200 patents, name 3 off the top of your head that aren't trivial, or would not have been invented otherwise. I can't think of 1.

      Just coming up with an idea, has now become a legal minefield, patents are probably more detrimental it innovation than helpful.

      Don't get me wrong apple have brought together technology in very stylish manner, by doing so made it mobile devices popular with consumers, but they really have not made that many significant technological innovations.

    3. Re:Erickson actually crreated by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Strange that this is considered insightful.

      Apple was paying Ericsson royalties for LTE related patents for some time, and when renewal came up in 2014, Ericsson jacked up the price.

      Apple didn't consider this FRAND, and went into dispute with Ericsson.

      They've apparently now negotiated rate lower than what Ericsson was asking at the renewal point, and paid them a lump sum for the period in which they weren't paying anything.

      This kind of thing happens quite frequently with standards related patents - i.e. its wilful infringement because the infringing party doesn't accept that the licencing rate being demanded by the patent owner is FRAND.

      Apple , being vertically integrated and a whole widget maker, often gets smashed with this stuff, as for just about everyone else, the hardware manufacturer picks up part of the tab, and the OS vendor picks up the other part (as the patent owners often double and triple dip the different legal entities involved in making devices - OEM parts supplier, finished goods manufacturer and OS vendor).

      Agreement has been reached and everybody wins.

      Now if you want to warp that into "Fuck Apple" then by all means, but don't let the facts get in the way of your prejudice.

    4. Re:Erickson actually crreated by monkeyxpress · · Score: 2

      In addition, it is not even clear what real benefit Apple got from all those patents. The iPhone was copied by Samsung and Chinese manufacturers within a few years of release, but eight years on it is still creaming the lion's share of profit in the industry. Even in China, the land of knockoffs and a complete disregard for intellectual property, they are winning among those who can afford to pay for hipster value.

      Apple has proven that you can fend of the competition in a highly competitive market much better using branding and shiny-shiny than a whole bunch of trivial technical patents that the average consumer doesn't give a stuff about.

      The big tech players need to get together and stop this stupid patent war stuff. It isn't helping any of them, and just creates barriers for innovation and makes lawyers more valuable than people who actually make stuff. Google seems open to reform and Tesla has been quite progressive. If Apple joined in that might be enough to start building a real framework for IP protection that properly serves innovation.

      Now that would be something really innovative, Mr Cook.

  2. IPR [Re:Figures?] by Geoffrey.landis · · Score: 4, Informative

    I don't know what "IPR Revenue" is

    "Intellectual Property Rights" revenue.

    From the summary: " For the full year 2015, Ericsson predicts its intellectual property rights revenue will amount to between 13 billion and 14 billion Swedish krona ($1.64 billion). In comparison, it reported IPR revenue of 10.6 billion krona for the full year 2014,..."

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    http://www.geoffreylandis.com
  3. Re:No more than fair by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Qualcomm had paid for them to use the patent, not for others to use the patent. Just because I have some windows software that does 8.3 to long name conversion on VFAT does not mean that I have the patent license to write that up in some code and give that code away for everyone else to use, despite the cost of the software including the cost of licensing the patent.

    And equally, neither did Apple have the right to make a product and sell it using the patented tech they did not have a license to.

  4. Re:No more than fair by Plumpaquatsch · · Score: 2

    Yes. "You're holding it wrong". We remember.

    So you read your phone manual: http://dontholditwrong.tumblr....

    --
    Of course news about a fake are Fake News.