Obama administration vetos Apple iPhone 4, 3G iPad 2 product ban [pdf]

I've gotta ask if you understand anything about the case, or are you just trying to speak generally.

Taking legal action against FRAND abuse is hardly unique to the US.

http://www.fosspatents.com/2012/12/european-commission-to-is...

See also Mueller on this veto; while I often disagree with him, I tend to agree on this issue:

http://www.fosspatents.com/2013/08/obama-administration-veto...

I can't begin to imagine what the ITC will do having been completely undermined by Obama. I wouldn't be surprised if Apple suffers from some international retaliation for this.

Obama doesn't fully understand how commerce works.

Congress seems to have explicitly preferred this approach, however. They could've set up a system with uniform rules and a mandatory process that the president can't overrule, as is commonly done with other areas like environmental rules. The president does have some power over the EPA, but can't arbitrarily instruct the EPA to drop rules simply because he disagrees with the outcome of the rulemaking process. But here Congress said that if the President disagrees with any ruling of the IPC "for policy reasons", he need merely notify the ITC and the ruling will be voided. That seems to indicate Congress wanted case-by-case review of ITC determinations for policy conformance. Why would they write that into the law? My guess is precisely to allow national economic interests to take priority over the rules on a case-by-case basis.

Regardless. Apple's genius isn't patentable anyway.

This is what increasingly bothers me lately about the decisions they make. They're sacrificing a lot of stuff "in the interest of public good". It seems like a lot of collectivism.

"We can't put bankers in prison because this way it's better for the public/the economy"

"We can't punish any corporation with more than a relatively minor fine, because that would hurt the public"

"We can't let a judge's decision about banning Apple's product for losing a patent battle in war they started, be implemented, because that would hurt the public".

The worst part is that they must be thinking these are really good decisions. It's probably why Obama convinced himself and did a 180 on the mass spying, too "because it's in the interest of the public".

Neither Apple, nor Samsung or Google invented patents. It's a government's creation made before they came to the scene. Once you build a company in a framework of patents and police enforcing them (by threatening to take your property by force), you have to play by the rules. And the rules are: grab first to protect yourself against others. In absence of brutal enforcement, companies would have to find peaceful ways to agree on "merchant's code" (which was always happening in history where the state did not intervene too much). E.g. Apple could come to a voluntary agreement with BestBuy that they won't sell "copycat" products, or Apple wouldn't sell iPhones there. And everyone would try to find a balance where certain business practices are acceptable or not. And ultimately customers would judge if the companies serve them well enough. But when government introduces a paperwork for violence, then business gets ugly.

see also: Noam Chomsky

An interesting opinion. It'll be interesting to see if the incentives align better with the guaranteed royalties from FRAND licensing vs. as you say "potential" royalties from trolling. If they don't this is an obvious place for policy changes (not that that is likely to happen if this kind of interventionism prevents real pain for large corporations).

I've been mulling over the most common argument predictably wheeled out by the patent aggressors and their supporters:

"Theft! We don't want them to steal our stuff!!"

Never mind that even if one allows that the whole concept of patents is a legitimate, and an ethical legal framework, patent infringement is never theft.

Theft would involve actual trespass of someone's physical property, that involves removing and/or otherwise exploiting said property without the owner's permission -- in effect depriving them of it.

So for an obvious example, if Corp A. breaks into Corp B's engineering offices, and literally steals their code and/or design documents.

That would be theft.

Of course, computer break in is not technically a physical trespass, but the distinction still stands: an actual trespass must occur.

We already have time-tested criminal laws for this, and justly so. Patents are completely redundant for this case.

But if you think about, there is actual, honest to goodness theft that goes on in patent cases... and the thief, it's the aggressor! Albeit for a "limited time" (that's of course subject to interpretation, in 20 years many things happen, to someone who dies, that limitation is permanent), someone is given the government-sanctioned go-ahead to literally deprive another of their own discoveries and hard work.

Independently discovered, independently arrived at and hammered out.

No matter.

The law puts it in the hands of the President, see this subthead: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6153056 ; he may of course delegate his authority, but the buck stops on the desk in the Oval Office.

Especially when it's multi-national corporations that use patents in the worst possible way, and use any possible scheme to withhold money from taxation.

I think few people, including Gruber, expected the Obama administration would step in. It was a possibility, but it wasn’t at all likely.

As for the ebook farce: Apple was told by Capitol Hill insiders that it should increase its lobbying efforts (like Amazon and Google), otherwise bad things might happen.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0512/76073.html

I've traced the history several times over the past few years here, but suffice to say, Apple wasn't suing anyone until the mobile phone industry realized Apple's little toy was gobbling all the profits.

See this comment from 1,250 days ago, recapping early timeline: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1166321

And a comment from a year ago:

Over two [now three] years ago, I argued that patent suits were how the licensing game was played among the existing players. It was considered an everyday cost of doing business by the incumbents, but Apple wasn't well prepared for this. (They've learned fast.)

This wasn't on consumers' radar because none of the fights were as interesting as the juggernauts of Apple v. Android which get framed in almost religious terms and taken personally by users who have chosen a camp.

The argument then was that Apple had not been actively litgating patents, but when Nokia (faced with dwindling profits, most of which appeared to be landing in Apple's pockets) started the fight, and Kodak piled on, Apple had to demonstrate that the patents it was using to counter these suits were patents that it was actively defending. This pushed Apple to file against HTC, and eventually against others who, again, had all been actively (but boringly) suing one another before Apple got to the table.

What medicine is that pray tell?

I mean, if you're comparing bans in Europe with bans in the U.S., they're not comparable. I don't think Korea is going to ban Samsung phones in its own country either.

> Using standards-essential patents as legal weapons is completely unethical.

I would argue, it's more like: "using patents as weapons is completely unethical."

And yes, it's a shame to see any patent aggressor get away with it. There is no fundamental difference between FRAND and any other patent. In all cases, independent invention is prohibited, denying inventors their natural right to gather the fruits of their labor.

Secondly, the "can't work around argument" is equally applicable to any patent discussion: unlike copyright, patent regime does not recognize the merger doctrine, placing some foundational methods at risk of being completely locked up by greedy entities.

Third, patent aggressors benefit tremendously from the work of third parties on whose shoulders they stand; patent aggression is an ugly contrast to this.

Another Point of Order. Obama didn't do this, the USTR did, on the authority of the President.

Edit: It would be fair to say: "The Obama Administration did this"

Veto just means "I forbid". It is perfectly fine to use it outside the context of the President denying his consent to legislation.

For example I could, and have, vetoed a resturant in a discussion of where to go for dinner.

In this case a decision of the International Trade Commission is presumptively valid unless the President, or his designee, forbids the ruling from going into effect -- or in other words, unless he vetoes it.

Utterly false. Apple is not a lobbying juggernaut at all and spends less on lobbying than any of the other major tech companies: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0512/76073.html

Apple is also taking a serious beating from Obama's DOJ. So clearly not 'a favorite' of the governments.

> Apple is a lobbying juggernaut

Wrong.

Apple's not even in the top ten tech companies. In 2012, Google spent $18M while Apple spent $1.9M, less than Google, Microsoft, Hp, Oracle, IBM, Facebook, Intel, Cisco, Amazon, and Dell.

Handy chart:

http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/02/18/apple-reduced-fede...

Key quotes: "Apple has historically spent less than its rivals on government lobbying" and "Apple's lobbying efforts were spread out pretty thinly over a wide range of issues".

So, pretty much the opposite of "juggernaut".

A reply to both Terretta and voodoo123: you don't suppose putting the former Democratic vice president on your board improves, not to mention leverages, lobbying "power", do you?

At the very least, whatever Al Gore is getting paid should probably get added to the official lobbying expenses.

Believe it or not, a whole lot of South Koreans were complaining about it, you just don't hear about it over here in America.

Source: I'm Korean

The ITC found the Apple could neither prove that the infringed was covered by FRAND, nor did Apple agree to what the ITC thought was a reasonable agreement. Of course the ITC considers FRAND which is exactly why Motorola's injunction against the Xbox was denied.

Samsung demanded a fee equal to 2.5% of the cost of the phone. From everyone, including Apple. Apple decided this was "unreasonable" for them, demanded special treatment and refused to pay.

The ITC concluded Apple was not following the rules and not playing fairly and thus initiated the ban.

And now the administration overturns the court's decision on a whim. Keep in mind this is the same legal playground which fined Samsung 1 billion dollars for having pinch to zoom on a phone.

It's very hard to see this is anything but unfair market manipulation.

You obviously haven't been on HN very long :-)

Is this a joke?

They tried very hard in the Samsung case to get a large portion of their offerings banned but the judge wouldn't have it.

They also got HTC products banned from the US for relatively minor infringements.

If you had any familiarly with "the president's opponents", you would know we label this as "crony capitalism" (much more akin to original formula Italian fascist corporatism), and have so since at least the 2009 cram-down of Chrysler's secured bond holders. While of course partisan, this OPED by the Republican governor of Indiana lays out the issues and some of the longer term consequences and outcomes: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870356160457528...

Note Apple's board includes one "Albert Gore Jr., Former Vice President of the United States": http://www.apple.com/pr/bios/ It's good to have friends in high places.

(Also note the cramdown was a remarkably bad long term idea; most specifically, because it ensures in the future heavily unionized companies in trouble will find it very difficult to pledge their assets for money to get themselves out of it. One of the major reasons Ford didn't have to declare bankruptcy is that its then new CEO, previously a Boeing lifer, in 2006 pledged all the company's assets to borrow $23.6 billion dollars: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Mulally#Ford_Motor_Company .)

It's upsetting that some proponents of this administration dismiss its critics because they presume that they dislike him categorically. It is this sort of bigoted presumption and political antagonism that is causing the erosion of political discourse in this country. This issue is not that Obama has critics, it's that some people believe that he shouldn't.

Why is it so difficult for people to accept that those who disagree with them aren't just trying to antagonize them, and may have actual, legitimate political orientations and views?

Instead of dismissing everyone with whom you disagree and painting them as irrational bigots, why don't you attempt to discuss something with them?

Please explain how this instance of the government choosing winners and losers arbitrarily is pro free market?

Creating arbitrary rules that don't apply to businesses who are serving the 'public interest' (politically connected) is only one step away from a planned economy.