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The information on Groklaw is not intended to constitute legal advice. While Mark is a lawyer and he has asked other lawyers and law students to contribute articles, all of these articles are offered to help educate, not to provide specific legal advice. They are not your lawyers.

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no No NO! | 354 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Standards Essential and FRAND
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, October 22 2012 @ 09:37 AM EDT
The question is.. If someone like Apple decides to sue Samsung over a patent
for touchscreens, is Samsung not allowed to withhold an LTE patent license and
sue them back? I got the impression that companies can and do reserve the right
to defend themselves to patent litigation by any means necessary, including
using patents that fall under FRAND terms. Of course the FRAND agreement
dictates that they must first negotiate in good faith, but if Apple chooses to
skip over the negotiations and go straight to the courts, they lose their
ability to complain about FRAND.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Standards Essential and FRAND
Authored by: PJ on Monday, October 22 2012 @ 09:49 AM EDT
Actually, FRAND is an exception to that. Under
FRAND you must license to any and all comers.
That's what you promise to do.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

commercialization != invention
Authored by: mcinsand on Monday, October 22 2012 @ 10:04 AM EDT
The problem is that people (and the USPTO) actually believes that Apple invented
touchscreens as data entry methods. It doesn't matter whether it's a cellphone,
a plant data entry screen, or the selector panel on a toaster; the innovation is
in the screen itself, not in merely applying touchscreens to a new type of
computing device. Apple's niche has been to use technologies that are too new
for the price to have fallen, while marketing devices with those technologies to
more well-heeled customers. Unfortunately, the USPTO has forgotten its mission
and is allowing first-to-commercialize to become equivalent to
first-to-innovate. It's like when Samsung approached Apple with the Diamond
Touch and related features or when LG came with the Retina display; Apple may
have commercialized, but the companies that actually developed the technologies
in those shiny features are the innovators.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Standards Essential and FRAND
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, October 22 2012 @ 10:48 AM EDT
Standards benefit consumers, and having companies work together provides those
standards. If there is no advantage to working together on a standard (such as
the opportunity of having one's patented technology), then companies go their
own way, and there are multiple competing technologies. To some degree, this
still happens with GSM and CDMA competing, as well as China's TD-UMTS and TD-LTE
as compared with the FD-UMTS and FD-LTE used elsewhere.

Just because Samsung spent much on telecommunications standards work, and Apple
spent it on user interfaces, why should they be awarded differently? Samsung
already has agreed to license their FRAND patents, why should they have to give
them away to their competitors who concentrated on non-standard patents? One
can't get rid of FRAND patent revenues while leaving non-FRAND patents alone.
They both need to stay, or both need to go.

Full disclosure, I work for a company who produces a large number of both FRAND
and non-FRAND patents, but do not produce consumer devices, but I don't speak
for my company.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

no No NO!
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, October 22 2012 @ 07:36 PM EDT
"So, for example, if Apple had invented the multi-touch capable touchscreen
(they didn't, but they were the first to bring it successfully to market),
they'd be within their rights to charge whatever they want for someone else to
use it."

"multitouch screen" ??? Patents are supposed to be about a specific
IMPLEMENTATION. If someone builds a screen a different way they should not have
to pay Apple a DIME. And "anything?" Suppose Apple charges a $1
license fee to all companies with only white employees and $1,000,000 if a
company employs black people. Is that legal? Can they do that?

This whole nonsense about patents does not help anyone. It does not help any
inventor anywhere, ever. It just empowers greedy thugs.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

  • no No NO! - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, October 22 2012 @ 11:03 PM EDT
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