Apple and Google's Motorola Unit Seeking Arbitration to Resolve Patent Dispute

[dalbir4444]

Originally Posted by pubwvj

"Apple's major foe is, however, still Samsung and it appears that there may be no settlement in sight for that dispute."

No kidding. Samsung lost the war. They're fast will a billion dollars in damages that they must pay Apple. They're going to do everything they can including spending that billion dollars on lawyers to avoid paying that billion dollars to Apple. In the end Samsung may lose twice over. Either way they're losers for having copied their customer's product and tried to sell it. This is making it so they're losing their customer too.

Regardless of whether or not they have to pay the billion dollars, they're not about to lose their customers. Just look at their profits from the last quarter.

[camnchar]

Originally Posted by dalbir4444

Regardless of whether or not they have to pay the billion dollars, they're not about to lose their customers. Just look at their profits from the last quarter.

He's talking about Apple.

But yeah, Samsung took a risk by copying Apple so blatantly, but it was a gamble that paid off. A billion dollars is a small price to pay (and they likely won't end up paying the full amount) for where they're at in the marketplace.

[rmwebs]

Originally Posted by DarkWinter

Less of the thermonuclear then, it would appear.

It was an idiotic comment that Steve obviously said in anger - there's no way Apple could do bugger all to stop Android's success (and yes, it is a success).

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Originally Posted by ItsWelshy

I hope not. Android is a stolen OS, it would be disgusting if Google get away with this.

Oh shut up and educate yourself on Android and iOS Mr Troll. It is not a stolen OS.

Sorry to be so blunt but it's pathetic.

[Radio]

Originally Posted by ItsWelshy

I hope not. Android is a stolen OS, it would be disgusting if Google get away with this.

How dare you!

Android is far more innovative than iOS 6 is now!

You truly have upset me - I will never ever speak to you again!

Good day sir! [walks away]

[CWallace]

Originally Posted by camnchar

Yeah, if he were alive, Steve Jobs might have stroked out seeing Android's market share today. It's playing out a bit like late 80s-early 90s Apple vs Microsoft.

Except this time it's Apple making all the money.

Originally Posted by theBB

There goes $12.5 billion.

Originally Posted by Oletros

What $12.5 billion?

Google paid $12.5 billion to buy Motorola.

It is widely believed Google paid this to secure Motorla's FRAND patents to use them in litigation against Apple (or to counter Apple's litigation against Android OEMs).

[Belly-laughs]

Originally Posted by rmwebs

It was an idiotic comment that Steve obviously said in anger - there's no way Apple could do bugger all to stop Android's success (and yes, it is a success).

Oh shut up and educate yourself on Android and iOS Mr Troll. It is not a stolen OS.

Sorry to be so blunt but it's pathetic.

abusive much? you only think it's pathetic because you think you´re better educated on the subject, but nothing suggests you are.

[robbyx]

Originally Posted by LastName

First the iPad mini and now this... RIP, Steve. It's all gone wrong down here.

I'm actually selling my third gen iPad to buy a mini instead. I think the mini is an awesome product. I dismissed it at first but once I held it, the full size iPad just seemed needlessly bulky to me. And all the whining about the lack of a Retina display is such needless drama. The screen looks awesome. And since the processor doesn't have to drive a Retina display, it's very snappy. And so light! I'm thoroughly impressed.

As for this latest development in the Apple patent sh@#show, I say great. Lets face it. No one is going to WIN. At this point, settlements are in everyone's best interest. Samsung needs to stop being an ungrateful, entitled b-word and come to the table too. How much money have they made supplying components? Apple has been a great customer. And this is how they repay. Total scum. No morals at all.

[dalbir4444]

Originally Posted by Belly-laughs

abusive much? you only think it's pathetic because you think you´re better educated on the subject, but nothing suggests you are.

That's deep.

[robbyx]

Originally Posted by CWallace

Except this time it's Apple making all the money. .

Exactly! All the market share talk is meaningless. Android phones and tablets are cheaper. So duh. Of course they're going to ultimately win in market share. Who cares?

What's obvious in study after study is that Android users don't spend much on apps, don't shop much online, and don't even access the web nearly as much as iOS users. Anyone can flood the market with cheap knockoffs, but those products clearly aren't building an ecosystem, nor are they making any independent developers rich.

So long as Apple takes the lion's share of mobile profits, the market share talk is just a meaningless distraction.

[inkswamp]

Originally Posted by camnchar

Yeah, if he were alive, Steve Jobs might have stroked out seeing Android's market share today. It's playing out a bit like late 80s-early 90s Apple vs Microsoft.

In what way? Apple never had a large market share of desktop computers comparable to what they have in phones and tablets. There's a persistent myth that Apple ruled the computing landscape and Microsoft came along and stole it all away, but that's not what happened.

Even if Apple does lose every last customer to Android (and surveys about customer satisfaction and intent of buyers indicate that that's not an immediate concern) it's already a completely different situation from what we saw with the Mac and Windows in late 80s/early 90s. I don't get what value people derive from making that comparison. The build-the-whole-widget versus many-partner-companies approach that people like to blather on about when it comes to Microsoft's success was completely laid to waste with the iPod. If that model was sure-thing, the Zune should have decimated the iPod and iTunes. Comparing iOS to Android is every bit as pointless. I'm not saying Apple will be king of the world forever, but if they lose out to Android, it won't be because of that.

[camnchar]

Originally Posted by inkswamp

In what way? Apple never had a large market share of desktop computers comparable to what they have in phones and tablets. There's a persistent myth that Apple ruled the computing landscape and Microsoft came along and stole it all away, but that's not what happened.

In the way that Apple did most of the hard work of creating a beautiful user interface that was perfect for the format (they licensed Xerox's ideas but improved on nearly every single one) and another company strolls along and takes all that hard work, changes it up slightly and calls it by a different name, and then licenses that out to other companies so they can sell "good enough" products cheaper than Apple. Eventually those products outsell Apple's.

Apple is in a much stronger position now, but it does seem like history is repeating itself.

[thekev]

Originally Posted by kdarling

You can see it here, in the graphics from a Japanese high school anime story that cast all the phone makers as characters. Motorola is on the far right. Next left is HTC (her HTC wallpaper apron gives it away), then prim Nokia with the cup. Not sure who's next, but then the crazy one with the blaster is Samsung, with LG left of her. The Apple boy is easy.

Attachment 377747

Where do you find this stuff? That picture is just so silly. It's great. On a side note, I'm now debating replacing the cat as an ipad-rest avatar.

[theBB]

Originally Posted by Oletros

What $12.5 billion?

The amount Google paid for Motorola.

If Google is forced into an agreement where Apple pays something like $1 per phone to use Motorola's FRAND patents, that would provide only a couple of hundred million a year cash flow, without providing any leverage against Apple's non-FRAND patents. (HTC is rumored to be paying close to $10 to Apple and around $15 to Microsoft per phone.) That is why Google had been trying to enforce its FRAND patents against Apple and Microsoft without going to arbitration to protect Android OEMs.

[TrentS]

If they end up merging, they could be named Mapple, or Aortarola.

[Glideslope]

Brilliant. First HTC, now GoogaMoto. Samsung has no chance.

Settle or loose the appeal. Nice moves Bruce. Interesting how this is all coming just after the 1yr ann of SJ's passing?

I'd love to see Tim's Contract.

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Originally Posted by TrentS

If they end up merging, they could be named Mapple, or Aortarola.

Aortarola.

[iChrist]

.

oh my. I sure love these patent stories. They are all so different and interesting

[theinsider]

Originally Posted by rmwebs

Oh shut up and educate yourself on Android and iOS Mr Troll. It is not a stolen OS.

Sorry to be so blunt but it's pathetic.

I'm going to chime in here, not to say Android is a stolen OS, but to say that it wouldn't be what it is now if Apple had not introduced the iPhone. What competitors, prior to the iPhone, was Android targeting? Blackberry. Almost every phone was an attempt to take a little of the share away from them. This is not to say that it wouldn't have evolved to what we see today but it wouldn't have happened within the same time frame.

[macs4nw]

Originally Posted by maknik

I can't believe Motorola still has that logo. Now that Google owns then, they've really got to replace the 50's bra with something a little more modern.

Two points, well made.
Don't know why, but that thing always makes me think of Batman.

[camnchar]

Originally Posted by theinsider

I'm going to chime in here, not to say Android is a stolen OS, but to say that it wouldn't be what it is now if Apple had not introduced the iPhone. What competitors, prior to the iPhone, was Android targeting? Blackberry. Almost every phone was an attempt to take a little of the share away from them. This is not to say that it wouldn't have evolved to what we see today but it wouldn't have happened within the same time frame.

Agreed 100%. Pre-iPhone, smartphones were essentially Blackberrys. Post-iPhone, smartphones are all essentially iterations of the iPhone.

[KPOM]

Originally Posted by DarkWinter

Less of the thermonuclear then, it would appear.

True, but in general Motorola has not had much success with lawsuits related to these patents, against Microsoft as well as Apple. The only dispute is over the royalty rate, so arbitration is a good way to handle it.

[macs4nw]

Originally Posted by Optheduim

i am 100% all for defending your intellectual property. BUT good... I am so tired of reading legal disputes on this website

Originally Posted by Rocketman

Frand issues are probably best settled by arbitration anyway. That will give both parties a dose of reality to clarify their thinking on non-Frand rights, which frankly they have every right to go nuclear on.....

Agreed, plus I think all parties are getting tired of wasting so much of their energy to these legal quagmires. In the interest of fairness to ALL parties, let's hope they can find a 100% impartial and intimately knowledgeable arbitrator, so that everyone involved, can live with the outcome.

[xofruitcake]

Originally Posted by theBB

The amount Google paid for Motorola.

If Google is forced into an agreement where Apple pays something like $1 per phone to use Motorola's FRAND patents, that would provide only a couple of hundred million a year cash flow, without providing any leverage against Apple's non-FRAND patents. (HTC is rumored to be paying close to $10 to Apple and around $15 to Microsoft per phone.) That is why Google had been trying to enforce its FRAND patents against Apple and Microsoft without going to arbitration to protect Android OEMs.

Agreed. I think Google is throwing in the towel in using Motorola FRAND patent to force Apple to settle on it's lawsuit. The ultimatum from FTC probably has a lot to do with why Motorola is agreed to arbitration right now. so much for buying Motorola for their patent. It really does not help Android competitive position too much. Samsung will get into trouble for using FRAND patents to try to force competitors to sign off their crown jewel patents to Samsung for a song. EU already opened a case against Samsung...

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-575...investigation/

The FTC has been investigating Google for more than a year and a half amid complaints that it ranks search results from its own products higher than those of competitors, in an unfair use of its market dominance. The company has also been accused of abusing the patent system to hamper competition in the smartphone market.


http://www.fosspatents.com/2012/01/e...gation-of.html

The European Commission just announced that it has "opened a formal investigation to assess whether Samsung Electronics has abusively, and in contravention of a commitment it gave to the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), used certain of its standard essential patent rights to distort competition in European mobile device markets, in breach of EU antitrust rules".

[camnchar]

Originally Posted by xofruitcake

Samsung will get into trouble for using FRAND patents to try to force competitors to sign off their crown jewel patents to Samsung for a song.

I really hope this is true.

[Marcus-k]

Originally Posted by camnchar

He's talking about Apple.

But yeah, Samsung took a risk by copying Apple so blatantly, but it was a gamble that paid off. A billion dollars is a small price to pay (and they likely won't end up paying the full amount) for where they're at in the marketplace.

"Copying Apple so blatantly"? Do you really think the bounce effect when scrolling and using two fingers to scroll (Which has been used on laptops for ages) was blatant copying? Because that's what that fine was about.

[gnasher729]

Originally Posted by Marcus-k

"Copying Apple so blatantly"? Do you really think the bounce effect when scrolling and using two fingers to scroll (Which has been used on laptops for ages) was blatant copying? Because that's what that fine was about.

On which non-Apple laptops has two finger scroll been used for ages? And I bet Samsung didn't come up with that bounce effect themselves.