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Surprise, surprise: court-directed mediation talks between Apple (AAPL) and Samsung's (SSNLF.PK)...
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Monday, July 23, 2012, 6:37 PM ETSurprise, surprise: court-directed mediation talks between Apple (AAPL) and Samsung's (SSNLF.PK) CEOs failed to achieve a resolution to the companies' wide-reaching patent dispute. Among the reported points of contention are differing opinions on the value of Samsung's standards-essential patents. Perhaps a bigger issue is that Apple isn't interested in licensing many of its own patents, and instead wishes to use them as a hammer to wage "thermonuclear war" on Android. (yesterday)
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This news story has 19 comments:
The problem in this global conflict is that while Microsoft is willing to be bought off with license fees (it has a business unit at Microsoft set up to generate IP licensing revenues), Apple is unwilling to tolerate infringers by granting licenses (because as opposed to Microsoft who can't get anybody to buy its Windows based smartphones so far, Apple actually has a very high margin smartphone franchise that it desires to protect its innovation). As the other writers pointed out, no one is forced to license their IP innovation (assuming that it is validated by litigation and patent re-examination) unless they have chosen to declare (self-decalred by the way) such IP as "essential" to an industry standard which then obligates them to license to all on FRAND terms.
The problem here is that the infringement on software patents by android OEM's (as opposed to hardware design patents which are also being fought over) are difficult for the android smartphone OEM's to develop workarounds because the underlying infringer is Google's android OS and these OEM's are reliant upon Google to develop the workaround in the OS.
Apple made peace with Nokia in 2010 when the two of them settled their suits against each other, but today, ever wonder why nobody (excluding trolls) is suing any manufacturer of Windows, Symbian, or Blackberry (both old Blackberry and new QNX) handsets, even though the same manufacturers who often also make Android smartphones. According to Foss Patents, instead large-cap companies with collectively over $1 trillion in market cap are suing (http://bit.ly/MXE4fb) manufacturers of android handsets, in what the author observes as the phenomenon that "Android continues to be an IP infringement lawsuit magnet."
The smartphone wars seems evidently relatively easy to solve,...if Google will simply stop infringing (by designing its own workarounds) and/or pre-emptively negotiating licenses from those that it needs to for Android, but then Google boys never did like to play by anything other than their own rules. Now Google wants other people's innovation and IP to be considered as de facto standards or "commercially essential" standards and should be licensed simliar to FRAND-encumbered SEP's (http://bit.ly/MXE276) -- now that's really talking out of both sides of one's mouth.
This could become a big big big issue for Google, its clear that Steve Jobs pass away changed nothing in Apple determination to go thermonuclear against Google, if you are in the middle, as Samsung case.. sorry.
Rgds.
"The smartphone wars seems evidently relatively easy to solve,...if Google will simply stop infringing (by designing its own workarounds) "
Of course, if there is a patent then Google will work around it. That's why Google's email client doesn't have the bouncy feature that iPhones do. That fact pretty much invalidates the rest of your argument.
The look and feel of Android operating system (as opposed to the hardware) is very different from IOS. Certainly more different than the difference between Windows and MacOS.
If Google was copying IOS don't you think that they would be the first target of Apple lawsuits? Apple could completely shut down Android by going to the source, not fighting every single hardware vendor out there. But they won't sue Google. Because they know they can't win.
I realize that you probably have a lot of money on the line on Apple, but just making stuff up and hoping it will be true usually doesn't work.
Recall the cold war....the US and the communist countries faced conflicts of ideologies, but couldn't risk raging war with each other because of the threat of nuclear holocaust, so they fought wars by proxy in Korea, Vietnam, and Cambodia, supplying others and sometimes becoming directly involved in hot war, while pretending not to be....I think that there were times where US pilots were directly fighting soviet pilots, or US infantry were fighting Chinese infantry, but everyone tries to pretend that it wasn't happening to avoid a direct hot war between superpowers.... Remember our special forces equipping the Afghans to wear down the Soviets? We fought the soviets by proxy....we won that one and lost Vietnam both by attrition....In Afghanistan, payback looks like we lost our own war there by attrition decades later.....
...this reminds me of the Google/Apple battle....indirect warfare....
Google can't get away with this. They have publicly stated that they are making billions from Android. A look into Google's books will easily prove that.
Also, as many people have argued, Apple is not really after Samsung's money, they want to shut them down as competitors.
The reason Apple doesn't sue Google is because they will lose. Much like Oracle lost when they sued Google over Android.
---yes, that was my point that I stated above. I'm not convinced that it would be easy to prove Google profits. Granted, my reasoning why they don't go directly after Google is my own thought but not from an informed law perspective, for I am not a lawyer .....another possibility, is that even if Google stopped developing for Android, the OEMs would just use what is available and do their own maintenance, leading to greater fragmentation, but Apple will have gone through a huge court battle and achieve very little if they don't go after the OEMs....what do you think?
Why dont you get yourself educated a bit, and read the following blog by Florian Mueller that documents all the cases involved in the smartphone wars in past 3 years. http://bit.ly/Oj6mUX
After you have conducted your due diligence, I would love to then understand your perspective of why you think this is "hogwash" and that Google is assured to win. By the way the Oracle-Google case was largely over the issue of copyrightibility of API's (and Google actually lost and found by jury to have infringed but Judge Alsop issued after-the-fact JMOL that the 37 API's were not copyrightable, a judgement that is now under appeal). And of course, I don't need to explain to you the differences copyrights, versus trademarks or trade dresses, design patents, and utility patents.
You exaggerate. I've seen reports that say it's 53%. We don't know the terms of these deals. In Samsung's case it was reported that MSFT licensed Samsung technology in return for agreeing to work with MSFT's future OSs. No reason for Samsung to turn that down.
You're wrong about Oracle vs. Google. It was about copyright *and* patent violations. Go to the source and read the heading of the complaint itself: http://goo.gl/465Fr
Google's motive to buy MMI, which I don't fully agree with, was to protect the Android "ecosystem", which means protect the OEMs, not Google directly.
About Florian Mueller please be honest and disclose that he has taken money from Microsoft. He is a Microsoft paid consultant (http://goo.gl/G7EV8).
You yourself said that Google could end this easily by just working around Apple's patents. Indeed they could do that very easily, and in fact already are. So, your entire argument completely doesn't make sense.
http://bit.ly/SQWSC8
It can get extremely complicated in some cases which is why the courts have to step in. What can be patented and what cannot requires legal interpretations that would make most people, including me, dizzy. It is no easy task for a company to obtain a patent so when they have one they should enforce it!
To say these things some how belong to the people or should be owned by the government is nonsense. Do you think we'd have smartphones or the medical technology that keeps us alive if companies couldn't make billions for inventing and patenting the way they work? Socialism is a nice idea, but it just doesn't work. It breeds mediocrity, not excellence.
Instead of making an arguement, falling back on 'it's socialism, and socialism is bad, so it's bad' as if that makes some kind on point is non-sensical and contributes nothing to any discussion.
I want to respond to you, felbert, but I don't see the point.