Qualcomm Urges US Regulators To Reverse Course, Ban Some iPhones (reuters.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Qualcomm is urging U.S. trade regulators to reverse a judge's ruling and ban the import of some Apple iPhones in a long-running patent fight between the two companies. Qualcomm is seeking the ban in hopes of dealing Apple a blow before the two begin a major trial in mid-April in San Diego over Qualcomm's patent licensing practices. Qualcomm has sought to apply pressure to Apple with smaller legal challenges ahead of that trial and has won partial iPhone sales bans in China and Germany against Apple, forcing the iPhone maker to ship only phones with Qualcomm chips to some markets. Any possible ban on iPhone imports to the United States could be short-lived because Apple last week for the first time disclosed that it has found a software fix to avoid infringing on one of Qualcomm's patents. Apple asked regulators to give it as much as six months to prove that the fix works.

Qualcomm brought a case against Apple at the U.S. International Trade Commission in 2017 alleging that some iPhones violated Qualcomm patents to help smart phones run well without draining their batteries. Qualcomm asked for an import ban on some older iPhone models containing Intel chips. In September, Thomas Pender, an administrative law judge at the ITC, found that Apple violated one of the patents in the case but declined to issue a ban. Pender reasoned that imposing a ban on Intel-chipped iPhones would hand Qualcomm an effective monopoly on the U.S. market for modem chips, which connect smart phones to wireless data networks. Pender's ruling said that preserving competition in the modem chip market was in the public interest as speedier 5G networks come online in the next few years.

Comments

Patent == monopoly

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't that the whole purpose of a patent anyway? You invent something and get the right to be the only one to sell it for X years.

Re:Patent == monopoly

[del_diablo]

The purpose of the patents really doesn't matter. What matters is the purpose DECADES AFTERWARDS, where the cumulative IP pool is general public prosperity.
But thats a derail. This is a case where you have corporations creating large collective patent agreements, patent pools, a lot of deals, and where Qualcomm has managed to essentially corner the marked. Because the patent pool is as large as it is, the general assumption is that if you are going to make a 4G cellular chip you are going to want to get a general patent agreement. And a lot of vendors do not make their own products, rather their cobble together parts from other manufacturers to make new products.
So what has happened is that Apple looked at the patent pool, looked at what they could cobble together, and went for it. Legal fiction and history will prove if their legalese gaze was sharp enough to not give Qualcomm license money for the design.

I would argue this is a interesting case, because Qualcomm has to prove that their hardware implementation is similar to what their patent pool holds. And then prove how Apple can't avoid running into that.

Re:Patent == monopoly

[jbengt]

No. The purpose of patents is to encourage dissemination of information, to discourage trade secrets, by offering a limited-time legal monopoly in return for full disclosure of the invention.
In other words, . . . to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries

So rule of law is nonexistent in the USA, then.

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell me, when you rioted against your lawful British owners, that was due to the laws being biased and only enforced to help the british corporations. You at the time HATED that the rule of law was not obeyed, so your constitution demanded that the laws rule even the congress.

But now, rather than have congress remove the laws they want to ignore, you want them to just ignore the laws for the benefit of USA corporations.

And when that black man was in charge, you collectively lost your shit over congress now under democratic control and a black president will ignore the laws for public safety.

But now your brand of radical racist bigots are ACTUALLY DOING THAT you're suddenly going "Well, hyuh, they're allowed to ignore the law for our benefit!".

Reasonable and non-discriminatory licensing

[DontBeAMoran]

The core issue here is Reasonable and non-discriminatory licensing. Qualcomm has patents on what is considered to be the best (if not the only) way for that wireless stuff.

You may like or you may hate both Apple and/or Qualcomm, but let's discuss the real problem: is Qualcomm trying to screw Apple on the price because they're bigger than the other manufacturers, or is Apple trying to screw Qualcomm on the price because they're bigger than the other manufacturers?

Re:Reasonable and non-discriminatory licensing

[Solandri]

The dispute boils down to Qualcomm wanting a percentage of the total phone price as a licensing fee, Apple wanting to pay a percentage of the component (radio) price as a licensing fee. Ironically, this the same BS Apple tried to pull on Samsung. Apple wanted Samsung to pay them a percentage of the phone's price to license some of their patents, while paying Samsung only a few cents to license Samsung's FRAND patents since that fee was based on the component price. So in that respect, Apple is being hoisted by their own petard here.

In both cases, I am for licensing fees based on the component price. Which means I was against Apple in Apple vs Samsung, and am for Apple in Apple vs Qualcomm. Licensing fees based on a percentage of the total product price is stupid. If a company making $100,000 trucks decided to integrate cellular connectivity to allow the truck to constantly keep its location and status updated with the operating company, they'd end up having to pay Qualcomm thousands of dollars per truck to license a part that costs less than $10.

It's like ads for get hard pills

[WCMI92]

They keep coming and coming and coming (unlike you).

They will not stop. Can both sides lose? Apple and Qualcomm are both loathsome megacorps.

Pricing

[Anonymous Coward]

From what I've read when the fracas started, so I may be wrong, but Qualcomm was selling Apple the base-band chips, AND wanted a cut of the sale price of the phone as a licensing fee. Which, of course, is insane, and an end-run around FRAND rules. If Qualcomm wants a bigger cut of the phone market then they can sell phones.

Re:Pricing

[Luthair]

Not really, consider most SoCs include hardware for decoding video codecs but for some formats you may still need to license the patents for the video codec if you enable them. Apple chose to buy the chips, not license the IP but use it anyway. FRAND also only applied to patents for a standard (e.g. 5G), I recall at least some of the patents being for non-obvious (as in not what you'd expect from Qualcomm) technology like quick battery charging.

Re:Pricing

[dgatwood]

The patent in question, 9,535,490 is not nearly a "technology", though. If I skimmed it correctly, it amounts to basically this:

To save power, the device talking to the cellular modem should collect data for a period of time, and then send it as soon as the timer expires or when the cellular modem provides data in the other direction, whichever comes first, to reduce the number of times you have to power up the modem.

And for that trivial idea, Qualcomm wants $13 per device.

I'll let you ponder how bonkers this is for just a moment before noting that the patent in question also appears to basically be nothing more than an "on a cellular modem" version of Intel's 20100241880 Ethernet power management patent.

So not only is the idea trivial, it wasn't even original. Either:

• This idea is so obvious that it should not have been awarded a patent in the first place, having been "invented" by two unrelated people working on unrelated technologies within a few years of each other who probably knew nothing about each other's work, or
• Qualcomm knew that this management technique worked in for Ethernet, and decided to reword the idea in a way that would make it hard to spot using simple text searches and file a patent on its use with cellular modems.

Either way, IMO, they're using what should be an invalid patent to extort the entire industry.

F**k Qualcomm.

Re:Pricing

[Luthair]

Sure, but it sounds like Apple isn't complaining about the validity of the patent, just that they shouldn't have to pay it.

Re:Pricing

[bill_mcgonigle]

F**k Qualcomm.

The patent is absurd, granted, but Qualcomm is using the US Patent System exactly as designed.

I don't want to say, "hate the game, not the player", because Qualcomm engages in some repugnant behavior, but this is only possible because of the whiners who think they need Big Daddy Government to protect "their" inventions.

The reality is the big corporations just accumulate warchests of offensive patents and then go after each other and small competitors with them, to keep those very small inventors out of the marketplace.

I say go ahead and put the embargo in place - Apple does seem in violation of this dumb, legal, patent. Maybe then, when the politicians can't buy their next stupid iPhone, they might start to think the USPTO is not such a good idea. It's not like logic or data are ever going to work on these morons.

Re:Pricing

[dgatwood]

The reality is the big corporations just accumulate warchests of offensive patents and then go after each other and small competitors with them, to keep those very small inventors out of the marketplace.

No, not really. Most companies accumulate war chests of patents, but most companies only use them defensively, either so they can negotiate cross-licensing terms when threatened by a real company or as a means to say, "Nope. We had a patent on that ten years before you filed yours" when sued by a non-practicing entity (patent troll).

What makes this particularly absurd is that Qualcomm almost certainly provided a programming spec telling companies how to use their chips, and now Qualcomm is suing Apple, claiming that by following that spec, Apple owes them an additional patent extortion fee. If Apple wasn't planning to develop its own baseband and ditch Qualcomm before all this nonsense, I can pretty much guarantee that they're going to now, because this is just over-the-top appalling behavior for any vendor. That said, I'm assuming that Qualcomm has already realized that their days as an Apple supplier are numbered, and they are just trying to milk the gravy train for every penny it's worth for the short time they have left.

The only question in my mind is why Apple didn't do this ten years ago, back when baseband crashes seemed to be a daily occurrence. Here's hoping the rest of the industry has the courage to follow their lead.

Re:Counter-suit

[Luthair]

Right, but since FRAND is (voluntary) for standards if the patent isn't necessary for implementing the standard FRAND doesn't apply and the IP holder is free to charge whatever they want, reasonable or not.