Motorola secures Europe-wide sales ban on iPhone, iPad | Hacker News Reader

Motorola secures Europe-wide sales ban on iPhone, iPad

zdnet.com

90 pointsGarbage48 comments

This is brilliant - but not because I hate Apple or have anything against someone choosing to use Apple, even tho I don't myself.

But hopefully a ban on such a popular product (right before Christmas to) will bring software patents and all the issues around them fully into the public attention and debate.

In the past it's been really hard to explain to non-geeks why they should care about such issues ...

Or am I being optimistic in hoping it would be reasonable debate and not just an "Evil Motorola/Google!" hate fest?

I downvoted you. Here's why: It's hard to take anyone seriously when they misspell "though" "tho". You may have made a good point, but I didn't read past your first sentence. I'm not trying to be a dick about it-- and I hate to clog up the comments section with a garbage comment like this one-- but you would really be doing yourself a favor to use somewhat correct spelling and grammar. It really sucks when people ignore what you have to say, not because of the message, but because of the delivery.

"Tho" is in the dictionary http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tho

And I down-voted you for an ad-hominen, and for not checking your dictionary: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/tho

Is it common practice to register anonymous accounts to explain why you've downvoted someone? "anonmouse" doesn't have sufficient karma to downvote anything, so clearly isn't your regular account. You appear willing to downvote others over inconsequential nonsense, but won't risk your own karma over it. This doesn't seem entirely in the spirit of things, I have to say.

> I'm not trying to be a dick about it-- and I hate to clog up the comments section with a garbage comment like this one...

Next time, then, consider doing neither.

"Tho" is a correct variation in American English. It's like down-voting someone for "misspelling" colour or metre.

Get over yourself

The HN website can do what they want but it seems anti-democratic to muzzle opinions and debate by making comment box text unreadable making the text colour lighter, just because some people (a few downvoters) find the words uncomfortable.

On the contrary, the community decided that text is not worth reading. It's very democratic. If enough disagree with the downvotes they can upvote the comment and make it black again.

If you can read it you may upvote it but often you, I know I often do/did, will just breeze over it and ignore it.

so you didn't want to waste your time reading past the first sentence, yet you dedicated 10x more time to creating a new account and writing up all this stuff?

You're right. Angry consumers, rioting for iPads would tip it.

I think you are being optimistic. The question is (tho), how will Apple counter this one. If they pull something similar on Motorola, then that's a settlement. If they can't pull anything, they have to buy themselves out - which would be great, because the only way to beat the patent system is its main players realizing, that the game became way too costly, and instead of patent troll firms they start paying lobbyist firms (may even be the same ones huh?) to get legislators to make radical changes on the patent system.

Motorola is being bought by Google. And while they aren't involved in this lawsuit, they are probably present as advisers, so a settlement will probably have to apply to all Android phone makers, as it's in Google's interest to do so.

Considering how fierce Apple is fighting Android companies, I don't think they'll settle. I'm seeing this fight going nuclear.

This farce has surely got out of control and just makes the manufacturers look extremely foolish. All of this is powered by greed.

Lets hope as you say that it pushes this debate out to the general public, although I doubt that it will happen.

Makes me want to not buy any of Nokia, Samsung or Apple's products.

This is an arms race. I just see this getting worse and worse until it gets better.

As these battles get larger, companies will dump more and more resources into their legal arsenal.

The ever larger legal departments at these corporations will then need something to do. Budgets to spend. Targets to meet. Goals to hit.

Pretty big piece of FUD here. Title is "secures Europe-wide sales ban", yet the article is littered with bits like "could be barred from sale" and "whether Germany can enforce a Europe-wide ban on 3G-enabled iOS devices is unclear".

It's a substantial win for sure. Of course it is unlikely that Motorola will try to enforce the ban, but it gives them an excellent bargaining position.

Agreed. This will turn out to be just about money, not principle or, you know, what the consumer wants.

I like that HN tends to stay away from reddit-style sensationalist titles. I suppose here the OP is just copying the original title verbatim, but it's still misleading.

Regarding the article itself, hopefully this will help popularise the fact that software patents are a bad joke.

Copying the linkbait article title is not an excuse, the submitter (Garbage) could have linked to a more balanced article.

I wonder if we could get into a situation where all leading mobile devices in the world are banned.

I wouldn't be surprised if every leading mobile device gets banned in at least one country or another.

Ironically, these kinds of law suits remind me of a book I read long time ago about in late nineteen century how American railroad tycoons bribed judges against each other: one day the judge bought by Vanderbilt would ban his opponents from operating, while a week later another judge bribed by his opponents would side-track the order. Heck, policemen bribed by each side even open fired against each other.

Of course, nowadays, we replace bribery with lobbying and "influence". The same game is still on-going.

My view is that if someone takes your idea and makes it better, it's called progress, and it should be encouraged, not banned.

A german court enforcing a europe wide ban? Now that would be rich.

How is any of this in the interest of the consumer? Can't one of those nice gov't agencies charged with protecting consumer rights stand in and say enough is enough?

I guess things have to get a lot worse before Apple/Motorola/Samsung/etc. realize that this is just not good for anyone.

How can Germany ban something Europe wide, since patents count per country?

I don't get it, at the price they sell these Apple products why would they not buy the right licenses?

I only have questions, no answers. Sorry for that.

Because Motorola isn't selling them a license. Ah, so why isn't Motorola selling them a license then? Because Apple is unique among the big mobile phone players in that they have no interest in licensing their own patents to others for money or for access to the other party's patents. Instead Apple are using them just for the purpose of getting the others off the market.

Nokia apparently managed to bludgeon a cross-licensing agreement from Apple. Motorola is presumably attempting the same.

Previous discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3333939

Lol, can't blame the writer for not understanding how Europe works. It's actually a bunch of countries, not states.

The article doesn't use the word state anywhere, but one of the definitions of state is "a politically unified people occupying a definite territory; nation.", so yes, Europe consists of multiples states.

The countries in the EU are known as 'Member States'.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Member_state_of_the_European_Un...

Edit: Also the author of the piece is a native of an EU member state

Edit2: Also now that I look I don't actually see the article mention the word 'state'.

What the hell, man?

I think he was simply implying that Germany doesn't control the rest of the countries in Europe like the US government controls its states.

They don't control the rest of Europe (though right now with the Euro situation they probably just about do), however there are provisions for legal precedent in one Member State to apply in every. I have no idea how it works and when it applies, though. It's definitely not so direct as in the U.S.

Courts in Europe are not precedence-based. At least not in all countries. Here (Poland) there is no such thing as precedence in courts, not to mention basing a verdict on precedence in foreign court.

EU legislation doesn't use the word 'country' anywhere, and neither does anyone working in the Commission. The EU is made up of 'Member States' in the parlance.

Good thing too. 'Country' is a loaded word with various populations both claiming and denying their geographic locale as a separate country from the legal entity (or 'Member State') they're a part of.

Just to confuse things even more, some of the member states are made up of more than one country.

This is just false. Just to clear things up:

- a state with lower-case S is a subdivision of a Federal Country.

- a State with upper-case S is a synonym of Country.

- All members of the EU are States/Countries. Some of these countries are Federal (Germany for instance) and are subdivised into states (Länder in the case of Germany).

- Some States of the EU include multiple Nations. UK is one of these. Scotland is neither a State nor a state for example, but it's a nation.

- Some States of the EU have territories that encompass States that are not members of the EU. Monaco or the Vatican are examples. Some of these States belong to the Eurozone though. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microstates_and_the_European_Un...

That's an amusing taxonomy, but don't fool yourself into thinking this stuff can be so precisely and unambiguously delineated. There's a continuum between a province with some autonomy to fully-fledged independent nation state, and the application of various English words to refer to particular entities that lie in different places on the continuum is governed primarily by history and culture, not by legal and political specifics. For any set of properties you care to define for nationhood or statehood, you can usually find entities that are not evenly cut into one or the other.

The Commonwealth shares a head of state; for example, Canada would be a sovereign state (small s) within the terminology of the Commonwealth. The Common Travel Area has passport-free travel; Irish and UK citizens can vote in one another's national parliaments, while EU citizens generally can only vote in local and EU elections. British crown dependencies are distinct from its overseas territories. There aren't enough shades of meaning in the miserly handful of terms you defined above (and seems rather German-centric) to adequately cover all the dependent and independent relationships involved.

Not to mention the fact that, as far as I am aware, the term used for the constituents parts of the UK is "country":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countries_of_the_United_Kingdom

I don't think many people answer "British" to the question "What country are you from?".

Not many people would answer "British" to the question "What country are you from?", because "British" is not a place, but a nationality. ;)

If you asked me what I am, I might respond "British" - whereas if you asked where I'm from, I might respond "Britain".

Where are the isles of man, guernsey and jersey in that list of constituent "coutries"? That is, where do they fit within the kingdom?

None of them are part of the UK, and they are also outside the EU. Somewhere I have a Jersey Pound...

I was merely trying to disambiguate the notion of state (as in United States of America) and the notion of State (as in Member State of the European Union), but you're right in putting a big warning sign on my taxonomy, since it's easily the kind of things that could (and actually has) lead to wars.

Oh and good thing my terms are German-centric, since I'm French. We don't even have the notion of state here in our civic system (but we do have tons of others of course).

> Irish and UK citizens can vote in one another's national parliaments

That's not true in general. People in Northern Ireland are entitled to one or both citizenships which makes it true in that limited case.

I'm Irish, yet I am on the UK electoral roll and get voting cards for general elections, which my German girlfriend does not.

http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/faq/voting-and-registr...

"To vote in a UK general election a person must be registered to vote and also [...] be a British citizen, a qualifying Commonwealth citizen or a citizen of the Republic of Ireland"

http://www.dublincity.ie/yourcouncil/votingandelections/Page...

"Elections for Dáil Éireann: Both Irish and British citizens can vote in elections for Dáil Éireann (the lower house of parliament)."

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