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| Authored by: Tkilgore on Thursday, September 20 2012 @ 04:48 PM EDT |
As commented previously, Apple was trying to have it both ways. At least, that
is how it looked to me from seeing the arguments presented.
1. Samsung cross-licensed the related patents to, approximately, all the rest of
the concerned parties as part of an industry-wide patent pool in which everybody
put in the patents and paid in money, the money being distributed to the actual
patent holders for patents X, Y, and Z on some kind of pro-rata basis for the
respective patents and some general consensus about what the respective patents
were each worth.
2. Apple was not part of the consortium or of the patent pool. One possible
reason for that is, Apple did not want to join because it did not want to
cross-license anything. Rather, it wanted to go off by itself and also wanted to
be able to sue any or all the members of the consortium patent pool for
violation of its own intellectual property. This is conjecture. The appearance
might not be the reality. There could have been other reasons, less sinister.
One would have to know many details in order to know for sure.
3. When Samsung pointed out that Apple is in violation of those
standards-essential patents and offered a license (to a non-member of the patent
pool which was very likely a non-member out of its own choosing) at rates which
appear to be well within the standard bounds of FRAND rates, Apple protested
that the rates were exorbitant and refused to pay anything at all.
4. Apple's public stand, as publicized all over the internet and related media,
was that Samsung was being a very bad actor, and lots of people took this story
at face value.
5. Apple, so far, seems to have gotten away with it, as per the jury decision in
the recent case, that Apple has done nothing wrong about these patents and can
continue to use them and has no obligation to license those patents from
Samsung. As I recall, the reason for that is Apple was using chips from Intel,
which were licensed, and Apple claimed that the doctrine of patent exhaustion
therefore applied, and the jury accepted that argument. Whether the doctrine of
patent exhaustion actually is applicable is perhaps a very good question, but
there seems to have been no doubt in the minds of the jurors. Strange logic did
seem to underlie some of the rest of their decisions, making it possible that
strange logic was used in this instance, too.
Thus, my personal impression is that Apple may have gotten away with something
here, which others in a similar situation might well not have.
None of the above has anything to do with my general opinion of patents, of
course, nor my opinion of FRAND patents in particular when related to an
industry standard. But it does appear to me that Apple's behavior was not in
accord with what the industry commonly has believed is acceptable behavior from
the competition, nor with what many of the other players in the industry would
have thought that they themselves could get away with. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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- 1973Ex15 - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, September 20 2012 @ 05:11 PM EDT
- 1973Ex15 - Authored by: Tkilgore on Thursday, September 20 2012 @ 08:27 PM EDT
- 1973Ex15 - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, September 20 2012 @ 10:21 PM EDT
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