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| Authored by: Tkilgore on Wednesday, August 29 2012 @ 12:07 AM EDT |
So, from what you are saying:
There was no previous agreement about what the FRAND license terms for these
particular Samsung patents were supposed to be, because all the actual licensees
of the patents were members of a patent consortium that also included Samsung
and thus automatically became licensed for these patents (presumably among some
other patents, too). Therefore, there were no precedents to take care of what
the terms and conditions for a non-member of the consortium (Apple) were
supposed to be, in order to be "FRAND" terms.
Perhaps the above may describe the lever which Apple pulled in order to escape.
Nevertheless, under such circumstances it is not obvious that what Samsung was
asking from Apple as a royalty would violate the principles of a FRAND license.
Now, FRAND is not really FRAND because its terms contradict the license terms
for Free Software. But FRAND licensing associated with standards is a prevailing
practice nevertheless. Apple has been able to get away with claiming that it was
obligated neither to license the patents (FRAND or no FRAND), nor to pay for
them, nor to join the existing patent consortium, nor to demonstrate in court
that the patents are not valid. And to claim all the while to be in the right.
Meanwhile, Apple has gotten lots of good press for claiming to stand up for
FRAND licensing for standards-relevant patents, and Samsung gets lots of bad
press for daring to claim that Apple needs to license the patents. Amazing.
I did mention that Apple also claimed patent exhaustion because Intel had made
the chipsets involved, and Intel had gotten a license. But does the doctrine of
patent exhaustion really apply? These issues were all decided, essentially
without argument and without a trial. So who knows?[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, August 29 2012 @ 10:33 AM EDT |
The telecom patent FRAND pool for 3G works like this:
1. All companies pay 5% of turnover in mobile market to pool.
2. All companies gets payed from their share of the patents in the pool.
Some companies turn a profit from their patents and other are net paying to the
pool. In reality it has helped created an oligopol where mostly those that have
patents in the pool can compete with the others in the pool. Outsiders have a 5%
disadvantage when trying to turn a profit.
Apple is not part of the pool and should in reality have to pay 5% if their
turnover to the patent holders in the pool. Apple has not done that. Apple has
not payed the FRAND patent license fee. Apple thus gets stuck in litigation
regarding these patents.
If Apple wants to use the patents the company has to pay the 5% patent pool
licensing or else legal action can be taken by each patent holder in the patent
pool.
PS iPhone don't support LTE. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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