Google Wants $1.7 Billion from 'unfair' iPhone Royalties | Hacker News Reader

Google Wants $1.7 Billion from 'unfair' iPhone Royalties

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28 pointshoi28 comments

Apple is running a disgusting campaign here in Europe against it's competitors. They even managed to get the European Union to start an anticompetive investigation against Samsung, even though they should be investigated and not their competitors. No wonder Google, Motorola, Samsung fight back. And they should.

Apple even managed that the galaxy tab couldn't be sold anymore here for a few weeks and had to be modified. When a trial ordered the same fate to their ipads, they managed to remove the ban (and Motorola even had to make a deposit of 100 Million Euros) in one day while complaining that banning a complete product because of one violating patent wouldn't be fair.

Is it "fair" to have a phone/tab banned because it has round corners? They didn't complain there and are still trying to ban all sales of Samsung's Galaxy phones on design patterns or trivial patents.

This is a classic case of you reap what you sow. Hopefully all these companies will one day come to their senses and move against software patents. I'm not holding my breath with Apples 100B in the bank and large numbers from the other players in this fights.

Who looses? The little guy like always. At least they are picking on people their own size.

At least they are picking on people their own size.

Sure, while at the same time ensuring no new start-ups will ever be brave enough to try and enter the field.

Presumably you therefore regard Google's actions as equally 'disgusting'.

Personally I regard them as a suitable response to the way Apple is acting, and I hope more players go after Apple - unfortunately it seems escalation is the only hope of getting things to the point where they might get forced into a truce, since as long as Apple hasn't met any real opposition they've just kept escalating things.

This seems to rest on the idea that 'Apple started it' so everyone else is free to act in just as unprincipled a manner without cost to their reputation.

As far as I am aware, Nokia won a settlement from Apple for the iPhone before Apple started going after the Android makers. Why is Nokia not the culprit here? Isn't it reasonable by the same argument used to defend Google, that after being attacked by one incumbent, Apple would become more aggressive about mobile IP?

It also appears that you assume all intellectual property enforcement is equally bad.

Cause most people have already written Nokia off. They are all guilty and I hope they all end up in a situation where they either agree to end this or die.

Guilty of what?

Of using patents to block progress.

What progress has been blocked?

Turtle's all the way down

I call progress the opportunity cost of the money that went into litigation instead of product development

Using that definition, I would conclude that no progress has been blocked. The parties involved have giant unspent cash piles relative to the amount they are spending on litigation, so none of their money is going into litigation instead of product development.

Nope, Apple started the Apple-Nokia fight too. Apple needed to license Nokia's GSM patents, and Nokia very reasonably asked for a cross license to Apple's patents as part of the deal. Apple refused, starting the fight.

Cross-licensing is standard industry practice, and FRAND IMO.

I'm not really sure what's so disgusting about it. Anyone with a pair of eyes can see that Samsung have been systematically pushing the boundaries of what you get away with in cloning a design. If Apple didn't show willingness to push back they would be allowing a competitor to dictate where that boundary should be set. Since they spend a great deal on design and branding it's perfectly acceptable that they wish to protect that investment.

Really? I see plenty of differences in the popular Samsung phone models. And there is only so much a designer can do with a slim touch phone to make it significantly different.

Clearly that's a judgement call on both our parts and neither of us is going to convince each other to think otherwise.

As an anecdote though, I was walking down Oxford St this morning and passed by a mobile phone shop that had two large displays in the window, one for a large black touch screen phone and one for an otherwise identical white version. As my eye passed over them my brain registered 'iPhone' since that is what they looked like. It was only when I looked a little closer I saw the Samsung text under the display.

This is clearly what concerns Apple execs, not merely rounded rectangles.

All PCs look the same

All laptops look the same

All phones look the same

Why all tablets can't look the same?

A tablet computer did not look like the iPad until the iPad came out. Funny that, eh?

They looked like laptops with flippable screens or tablets with flip-out keyboards... all of them had stylii.

I used small tablets from HTC for years before iPad, their OS sucked, but they where more or less of the same form factor.

Your analysis of the situation is flawed, because you're treating the situation as if both Apple and its competitors are using the same types of patents, but they're not.

The patents that Samsumg and Motorola/Google are so-called FRAND (fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory terms) patents, meaning that they cover technology, such as 3G/UMTS and GSM patents, which are essential to the function of a telecommunications device. They are called FRAND patents because, as essential patents, companies holding them are supposed to agree to be 'fair' when licensing them to others.

The EU investigation is based on their suspicion that Samsung is abusing its FRAND patents and not following the FRAND guidelines. This is partially because both Samsung and Motorola/Google are demanding a royalty on the price of Apple's final product (i.e., the iPad and iPhone), rather than on the price of the actual baseband component that uses the patent.

Samsung is claiming a 2.4% royalty and Motorola/Google is claiming a 2.25% royalty, both of which are pretty clearly unreasonable, likely 'unfair' and possibly in breach of their FRAND commitments. One example thrown about is that if these royalties are accepted and a car manufacturer like BMW installs a UMTS module in one of its cars, it would be obliged to pay 2.4/2.25% of the entire car's value to the patent holder. This clearly makes no sense.

Apple, on the other hand, is enforcing design and technology patents that are not essential to the function of a telecommunications device, so they are subject to different rules and have not been submitted under FRAND commitments. Hence they have no EU investigation as they're not under any obligation to license those patents, fairly or otherwise.

The difference is that without many FRAND patents you probably can't make a mobile phone. But you can make a mobile phone even if it doesn't look like an iPhone or have a multi-touch screen.

With all that said, this constant patent litigation is ruinous and I really hope that this will lead to some much-needed reform in this area.

Sure it's justified on their part, but if the EU doesn't cut everyone's crap we'll be left with a shitty oligopoly.

Does anyone have any thoughts on if making patents non-transferrable would help the current patent situation?

I'll admit I have barely begun to think about the implications so it may be dumb from the outset but I think:

* No transferring to patent trolls

* No situations like the link

I haven't really thought about the opposite side of things, was kind of hoping people here would have strong opinions on the matter.

I'm not sure how that could be done. If I understand correctly it's the person with his name on the patent that is allowing these companies to use his patent in anyway they see fit. Their name is still on the patent so it wasn't exactly transferred.

Can someone clarify the mechanics of this?

There is a difference between inventor and assignee.

Typically, inventor is a person or group of people that acutally invented something, while assignee is "the owner" of the patent that can use it fro protection, lawsuits, etc.

Noone can change inventor, but assignee can sell patent and reassign it to someone else.

Ah I see how that works now, so it would be possible to make the assignee a one time thing too but in the end what would prevent a "inventor" from assigning the patent to a troll in the first place and some troll create their own patents so that's an issue too.

Buying companies for patents would also leave another loophole. This issue isn't simple I guess.

Making patents non transferable could result in many a big ideas not getting executed because the inventor does not have the capacity to implement them or is on the way to implement it in a commercially poor way.

Why would this be so? Surely the inventor could simply licence the patent to a party which does have the capacity to fully the exploit the invention?

I updated it to include the relative shares of the patent pool for LTE to give a better perspective comparing the amounts they ask for compared to Qualcomm.

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