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US To Review Qualcomm's Complaints About Apple iPhone Patents (reuters.com)
U.S. trade officials have agreed to investigate Qualcomm's allegations that Apple Inc infringed on patents with its iPhone7 and other devices, the U.S. International Trade Commission said on Tuesday. From a report: The ITC will make its decision "at the earliest practicable time" and will set a target date for completing its investigation within the next 45 days, the commission said in a statement. Qualcomm filed the complaint in early July, asking U.S. trade regulators to ban certain models of the iPhone that contain so-called broadband modem chips, which help phones connect to wireless data networks, that were not made by Qualcomm. Apple began using broadband modem chips made by Intel Corp in the iPhone 7. Qualcomm has not alleged that Intel chips violate its patents but says the way Apple uses them in the iPhone does.
That's one of the most cluelessly ignorant things I've heard in a while...
Like them or not, Qualcomm has been the driver behind much modern wireless tech, and their chips are in pretty much every high-end phone. Only recently have any competitors been remotely close to matching their performance and battery efficiency - something Intel still failed at by the evidence Apple had to downgrade the iPhone 7S to be as slow as the 7S+. Samsung has finally gotten close, and for application processors Apple does beat them, but Qualcomm is the undisputed king of the wireless modem.
They also invented CDMA, which is the entire underlying tech of 3G networks and indisputably deserve those royalties. And invented good portions of the LTE spec too.
Now, are they charging unfair royalties for patent-essential things? Maybe so. But Apple sued first, and said effectively "we're gong to keep selling iphones with both your actual chips, and your IP, and we're not going to pay anything anymore, even thoug you're charging what we contractually agreed to.". So heck yeah Qualcomm is right to sue back in that case and ask for an injunction.
This is the sort of dispute the ITC should definitely examine, from all sides.
Nope, she invented frequency hopping spread spectrum (FHSS), not direct-sequence (DSSS) as used in CDMA. Totally different technologies.
FHSS as invented by her was better for anti-jam and anti-detection than single-carrier systems, and for RF (which she wasn't proposing) it has good multi-path performance. But it doesn't actually improve frequency reuse at all, it actually can be worse because in high-density you will have collisions.
DSSS by comparison has great reuse, as evidenced by CDMA and GPS stacking multiple users on the same frequency with only spreading-code separation. It has poor multi-path performance though, since you need to coherently de-spread the signal, so phase variance requires complex equalizers for wide-ish bandwidth, including the >1MHz chunks UMTS uses. Potentially better anti-detection, if high spreading ratios are used, and roughly equivalent anti-jam to FHSS overall.
Now, are they charging unfair royalties for patent-essential things? Maybe so. But Apple sued first, and said effectively "we're gong to keep selling iphones with both your actual chips, and your IP, and we're not going to pay anything anymore, even thoug you're charging what we contractually agreed to.".
Except that's not anything close to what happened. Qualcomm licenses its technologies directly to people making chips. They themselves design and sell chips. However, Qualcomm wanted Apple to pay royalties directly to them AND also pay other companies (not Qualcomm) for chips made by companies that licensed the same technology from Qualcomm. That's double dipping.
As direct comparison, that would be like ARM demanding royalties from anyone using a Samsung ARM processor after ARM licensed their cores to Samsung to make processors.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Apple had to downgrade the iPhone 7S to be as slow as the 7S+.
That's almost correct, except that neither of those models actually exist (yet?), and the modems in the 7 and 7 Plus models differed by carrier, not by the size of the phone. But I do agree that Intel's modem is inferior.
They also invented CDMA, which is the entire underlying tech of 3G networks
If you were to slap about a dozen asterisks on that statement to spell out all of the caveats, you might be able to get away with saying things that way, but if that's all you're going to say, then no, they didn't, and no, it isn't.
Assuming you're talking about CDMA2000, it was, at best, the underlying tech for a small minority of 3G networks (though some Americans have a disproportionate sense of its use, given that half of our 3G networks used it). UTMS on GSM networks was far and away the dominant 3G tech. If, on the other hand, you were talking about the concept of CDMA, which UTMS is built on in some of its implementations, that concept has been around in research since at least the '30s and has had implementations since at least the '50s. I was studying it in school before 3G networks were even a thing, so while it does underpin many 3G networks, Qualcomm had no hand in inventing it.
But Apple sued second
[Qualcomm's] chips are in pretty much every high-end phone. [...] Qualcomm is the undisputed king of the wireless modem.
FTFY. The US government's suit against Qualcomm, which came prior to Apple's suit, would suggest that the reason they're in every high-end phone is at least partly due to anticompetitive practices.
[Apple] said effectively "we're gong to keep selling iphones with both your actual chips, and your IP, and we're not going to pay anything anymore, even thoug you're charging what we contractually agreed to."
Actually, Apple is holding the payment in bond pending the court's determination of whether the contract is even legal in the first place, which is a fair question to be asking, given that recent Supeme Court rulings and the USG's suit would suggest otherwise. Also, if you'll recall, the withholding of royalty payments started weeks after the suit was filed, and came in response to Qualcomm not paying them the $1 billion in rebates it's contractually obligated to pay. And unlike Apple, they haven't, so far as I know, said that they're holding those payments in bond. They're simply refusing to pay them.
Let's be honest: they're both playing hardball, but suggesting Apple was first to break the contract is factually incorrect.
So heck yeah Qualcomm is right to sue back in that case and ask for an injunction.
This is the sort of dispute the ITC should definitely examine, from all sides.
Something we can finally agree on. I'm fine with Apple being under scrutiny, especially since I agree that they're breaking the contract too, but let's not overstate Qualcomm's case.
I don't think anyone denies that Qualcomm is a true innovator and contributor to technological progress. The dispute here is isn't really a patent dispute, it's an accounting dispute. Qualcomm is arguing that they should be paid twice for the use of their patents - once by the company making the chips incorporating Qualcomm technology, once by the company which buys those chips to install in their product. In essence, the question is does the first sale doctrine (which covers copyrighted and trademarked works) also extend to patents?
So I usually dislike Apple, but I'm on their side on this one. (Sort of. It's wroth pointing out that Apple tried something just as asinine, claiming companies licensing Apple's patents should pay a % of the entire value of the final product rather than just the component part that used Apple's technology. So if you put a $5 cellular GPS unit which used Apple's patent into a $100,000 truck, Apple felt they deserved 2% of $100,000 instead of 2% of $5.)