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| Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, February 26 2013 @ 04:20 AM EST |
Apple would like the F in FRAND to mean free and they would
like their obvious/broad/should-not-have-been-granted
patents to apply broadly to everything and take all profits
as a result. Yeah, that is totally reasonable.
The whole point that clearly sailed right past you is that
high quality patents that make up standards would made
worthless by low-quality patents on things that surround the
standard bits. It is a value inversion, and if that comes
to pass then attempts at creating future standards will be
in peril.
And as far as the promises that were made, I have not seen
anything that said that they promised not to seek an
injunction if somebody like Apple or Microsoft refused to
pay the FRAND rates (and insisted on F=free or close enough
to it).[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: matth on Tuesday, February 26 2013 @ 05:09 AM EST |
| Don't feed them after midnight, etc. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, February 26 2013 @ 06:23 AM EST |
Absolutely. The whole premise of the article is absurd.
Patents are NOT property, they're government-granted monopolies.
[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, February 26 2013 @ 09:42 AM EST |
How does picking winners and looser by limiting the rights of
some companies and not others 'for the public benefit?'
It seems you don't understand what's being said at all.
Obviously patents are not property the same way a building is
property (no one said they were so awesome straw man there).
Does that mean they're not subject to the takings clause? I
don't think so. Why do you?[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Gringo_ on Tuesday, February 26 2013 @ 01:45 PM EST |
The iPhone leads the smartphone market and has a
manufacturing cost around
just one third of its $600 average
wholesale pricing (before operator
subsidies to consumers).
Gross profit margins approaching 60% provide a
significant
return on investments in software, brand and distribution,
while
Apple largely relies on the essential IP developed and
contributed to mobile
standards by others.
When Apple entered the mobile phone market with
the
iPhone, Apple became the untouched market leader for
smartphones. Until
very recently Apple commanded the
majority of the market share and virtually
all the profit.
In the process it was well compensated for its
contributions,
which were largely integration, software and
design advances. However, when an
open source operating
system which could be implemented by many hardware
manufacturers (but had relatively little patent protection)
proved to be an
effective competitor, incentives changed.
Faced with the commoditization of the
smart device (a market
trajectory that is common and healthy in most tech
markets)
that threatened to cut into its huge profit margins, Apple
pressed
its patent advantage. As a result, vertically
integrated hardware
manufacturers, such as Samsung and
Motorola, were forced to use their SEP-heavy
portfolios
defensively— portfolios full of patents and technology that
had
helped build the underlying communications protocols
that Apple utilizes in its
devices.
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, February 26 2013 @ 02:07 PM EST |
| I was going to say something similar, but I was going to use the same analogy
that's used with copyright.
If some steals your car, you no longer have your
car; i.e., you've lost your physical property. Under copyright, if someone
copies your book or music or whatever, you still have your book or music or
whatever. Which is why the court recognises illegal copying as "copyright
infringement", not "stealing" or at least that's my
understanding.
Similarly, if the goverment takes your property to build
a road or highway, you no longer have your property. But if someone uses your
patents without permission, you still have your patents. My point being
it's not stealing, it's, ummm, patent infringement or something.
I'm not
saying it's right or fair for someone to use someone else's patents without
permission, but simply that PJ's analogy of the government taking your house and
property to build a highway is flawed.
Although I can't think of a
better analogy at the moment. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, February 26 2013 @ 09:59 PM EST |
To the OP . . CCIA's brief gives a very detailed history of how FRAND has
worked.
It's a lot more flexible than simply taking each word in the acronym
at face value:
"Standards participants developed several core strategies
for dealing with these competing goals. . .
The first strategy,
which has been referred to as the “let sleeping dogs lie”
strategy, involves
firms contributing their R&D to standards, acquiring SEPs
and then
sitting on them. Companies that engaged in this strategy were content
to
let others use their SEPs,
often without charge, as long as they themselves
were not subjected to any demands. If approached with a license demand, or
threatened
with infringement lawsuits, they would use their SEPs (as well as
other non-SEPs when
appropriate) to negotiate broad cross- licensing
agreements with the primary intention of
maintaining their “freedom to
operate” in the product. This discouraged lawsuits and
reduced the actual
royalty burden of the standard, as many, if not most, of these companies
never actually charged others for the SEP royalties they were entitled to.
A second but similar strategy practiced by vertically integrated firms
involves active pursuit of
cross-licensing involving bundles of SEPs and
non-SEPs designed to achieve product market freedom.
As individual products
often encompass hundreds of standards (and the distinction between SEPs
and
non-SEPs was often unclear), vertically integrated firms sought to minimize
transaction costs
by seeking a bundle of licenses that allowed both parties
freedom to operate, at least in
respect to one another. As many of these
vertically integrated companies did not have major
licensing programs, a
pure cash-for-SEP license was likely of little interest. If their
counterparty
insisted on taking just an SEP license, and wasn’t willing to
agree to non-assertion clauses
or broad cross licensing, the licensor firm
viewed it as reasonable to charge higher FRAND rates
to compensate for
failure to include the other valuable contractual provisions. It is important
to
note that this strategy, which often resulted in zero-fee (or a small
one-way balancing fee) cross-licenses,
also minimized the royalty burden on
the standard.
If competition agencies or courts significantly rein in the
bilateral negotiating flexibility currently embedded
in FRAND commitments,
the delicate equilibrium struck over the last several decades that allowed firms
to
actively participate in SSOs while maintaining a path to defend
themselves from a poorly functioning patent system
will be disturbed. And
there is no guarantee, particularly given the unchecked tide of broad,
overlapping,
and questionable patents, that the new equilibrium will be
better for either consumers or innovation." [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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