Antitrust Investigation of Apple Led Nortel Patent Purchase

[AZREOSpecialist]

Google could have put together its own consortium as well - nobody was preventing them from doing that. Similarly, nobody was holding a gun to Google's head telling them how much to bid. How is this anti-competitive? I believe other bidders had also put together consortiums including more than one company.

 

[Lennholm]

Google's eric schimdt, poached ideas and plans from APPLE AS HE SERVED ON THEIR BOARD. He not only betrayed Apple, but Steve too. He and Googles, "don't be evil" mantra, is bull.... Google wants to destroy the iPhone, but Apple won't let them... Did Apple enter into the "search" business? Nope.. But Google decided to betray a friend and tech partner and enter the phone business.

They betrayed Apple, on many levels, and You don't do that to Steve Jobs.

They being Google "violated the alliance"

Would it be ok to do it to a commoner instead of His Royal Highness Steve Jobs? This must be an act of high treason since it was done to HRH Steve Jobs, so why hasn't Eric Schmidt been hanged, drawn and quartered yet?

Joking aside, if it was actually a case of theft Apple should've and would've sued. Schmidt left when there was a mutual understanding between him and Apple that it wasn't appropriate for him to stay when both Apple and Google entered the same market and became competitors. He wasn't forced out and he didn't try to stay to poach ideas.

 

[dethmaShine]

Would it be ok to do it to a commoner instead of His Royal Highness Steve Jobs? This must be an act of high treason since it was done to HRH Steve Jobs, so why hasn't Eric Schmidt been hanged, drawn and quartered yet?

Joking aside, if it was actually a case of theft Apple should've and would've sued. Schmidt left when there was a mutual understanding between him and Apple that it wasn't appropriate for him to stay when both Apple and Google entered the same market and became competitors. He wasn't forced out and he didn't try to stay to poach ideas.

There's a reason Paypal sued Google. Google has absolutely no ethics.

 

[iDisk]

Would it be ok to do it to a commoner instead of His Royal Highness Steve Jobs? This must be an act of high treason since it was done to HRH Steve Jobs, so why hasn't Eric Schmidt been hanged, drawn and quartered yet?

Joking aside, if it was actually a case of theft Apple should've and would've sued. Schmidt left when there was a mutual understanding between him and Apple that it wasn't appropriate for him to stay when both Apple and Google entered the same market and became competitors. He wasn't forced out and he didn't try to stay to poach ideas.

Google betrayed Apple Article

This trusted NYT source, describes the true nature of Google's view on Apple... My friend don't get sucked into Google, it's a company that only does search and maps well.. nothing else. They have no culture, or artist.

And if it was anybody else besides Steve, then who really cares

 

[franswa za]

Actually despite the odd bids, they did take it seriously, but went in with a maximum amount they were willing to spend. Once the bids exceeded 4 billion, Google was done. What does it matter if the the bids weren't perfectly rounded up to the million or billion when the winning bid was half a billion over their max.

It's a shame that innovation is giving way to buying up patents and extracting fees to kill off competition.

good post

groogle/farcebook -2000000000

 

[Keebler]

i see this in 2 ways:

1. no matter who had won the patents, I see them looking into it thanks to Microsoft and it's windows anti-trust which truly changed the game forever. no sarscasm there...just a fact.

2. Google is crapping themselves b/c Apple has the money to buy these patents and gain a huge advantage. I'm trying to be a non-biased fanboy, but if they've earned the cash to buy what they can or want, tough tittie. It's their right and they've earned it. good for them.

 

[RalfTheDog]

What exactly are they losing? Google isn't suing.

Yet.

Actually despite the odd bids, they did take it seriously, but went in with a maximum amount they were willing to spend. Once the bids exceeded 4 billion, Google was done. What does it matter if the the bids weren't perfectly rounded up to the million or billion when the winning bid was half a billion over their max.

It's a shame that innovation is giving way to buying up patents and extracting fees to kill off competition.

The function of a patent is to have something you created or purchased that your competition does not have. If you can't use a patent to produce a better product and run your competition into the ground, patents are meaningless.

Many consider Windows OS to blow for quite some time (Including a large number of Windows users themselves). But it's still by far the most popular operating system. Why? Because it's most affordable and convenient for most of the consumers.

So, while Android may be getting increasingly popular among consumers, that doesn't mean it can't suck. I'm not taking sides into whether Android sucks or not, but just saying that the number of activations doesn't mean it doesn't suck.

People use Windows because everyone else uses Windows. People are sheep.

 

[Stok3]

Google betrayed Apple Article

This trusted NYT source, describes the true nature of Google's view on Apple... My friend don't get sucked into Google, it's a company that only does search and maps well.. nothing else. They have no culture, or artist.

Very true but they are experts at selling your privacy to the highest bidder as well.

 

[Popeye206]

Interesting comments here....

Personally, I don't see any issues here as long as Google and others all get fair market prices for licensing these patents. Obviously Nortel had some good patents that Apple, MS, and others wanted so they didn't have to pay the royalty. But they have also ponied up tons of cash to take that position.

I can't imagine it will hurt Google all that much. Someone would have to be paid for these licenses.

As someone else pointed out... it's just business.

 

[vvswarup]

Can I get a source for that factoid, big guy? From everything I've read, Google didn't take the auction very seriously and really didn't want the patents that bad.

If Google didn't want the patents that badly, why did Google place such a high opening bid at $900 million? Why is Google lamenting the fact that the Rockstar consortium won the bid?

I still don't understand what Google was trying to accomplish by bidding pi and some other weird constants. To me, what they're saying now sounds like sour grapes.

 

[RalfTheDog]

LTE Advanced is quite a ways away from hitting the market. There is a very real chance Android will not be a player by that time. When Google can show real harm, not just theoretical harm in the future, action can be taken.

 

[bsolar]

• He took the information he found out while working at Apple, and used it to release a touch base equivalent Android device.
• He basically, stole.

I am still waiting for Apple's lawsuit. In any case "stealing" competitor's features is something even Apple does, after all it seems like iOS5 will have Android-like notifications as one of the most prominent new features.

 

[Popeye206]

If Google didn't want the patents that badly, why did Google place such a high opening bid at $900 million? Why is Google lamenting the fact that the Rockstar consortium won the bid?

I still don't understand what Google was trying to accomplish by bidding pi and some other weird constants. To me, what they're saying now sounds like sour grapes.

Remember... Google has said nothing to date that I know of about the sale of these patents. It's the Antitrust people who are looking into it... not Google right now.

 

[Supersonic]

Ganging up with other companies to exclude another party is anti-competitive. Doesn't matter how we feel about it, if they truly are engaged in illicit activities.

I just don't fundamentally 'get' this anti-trust stuff at all...

We live in a capitalist society. Its dog eat dog out there, but you guys (talking as a Brit to you US guys and girls over there...) really have this communist, lefty stance towards anti-competitiveness when it comes to some aspects of business.

Why not let companies screw each other over, isn't this the most fundamental rules of a capitalist society. He who dares wins, etc...

 

[NightFox]

Missing Hyphen?

Isn't there a hyphen missing in the title?

Shouldn't it be "Antitrust Investigation of Apple-Led Nortel Patent Purchase"?

As it stands, I read it as the Nortel Patent Purchase was led by the Antitrust Investigation of Apple, which quite intrigued me.

 

[tekker]

• He did work for Apple.
• He "willingly" resigned.
• He took the information he found out while working at Apple, and used it to release a touch base equivalent Android device.
• He basically, stole.
• Google has no original thinking, and no culture.

uh..... good artists copy, great artists steal? lol

 

[Rodimus Prime]

Very true but they are experts at selling your privacy to the highest bidder as well.

I might like to point out that the photo used is really pretty crappy as it is taking the app draw to make it look like OMG it is the same when it is far from it. Besides Apple was not the first to start using the grid icon lay out on phones and how many different ways can you display icons that tar touched to launch.

In going threw the 4 pages of the article to me it seems like a lot of fluff and the parts about Apple seem to show Apple acting like a big baby.

 

[mazz0]

Macrumors needs a Patent page for this type of news.

I vote for that, it would quickly become the biggest section of the site!

 

[gaz81]

Interesting stuff, although you could go back to this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_Alto

The first computer (I think) that used a graphical interface.

The paragraph is interesting:

-------------

In 1979, Apple Computer's co-founder Steve Jobs visited Xerox PARC, where he was shown the Smalltalk-80 programming environment, networking, and most importantly the WYSIWYG, mouse-driven graphical user interface provided by the Alto. He reportedly was not impressed by the first two, but was excited by the last one, and promptly integrated it, first into the Lisa and then in the Macintosh, attracting several key researchers to work in his company.[4]

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I'm sure lots of companies have used other companies ideas.

 

[marksman]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8G4 Safari/6533.18.5)

The smaller companies joining up against the largest , in the case of smart phone os, android and google is anti trust, ha ha.

 

[RalfTheDog]

Interesting stuff, although you could go back to this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_Alto

The first computer (I think) that used a graphical interface.

The paragraph is interesting:

-------------

In 1979, Apple Computer's co-founder Steve Jobs visited Xerox PARC, where he was shown the Smalltalk-80 programming environment, networking, and most importantly the WYSIWYG, mouse-driven graphical user interface provided by the Alto. He reportedly was not impressed by the first two, but was excited by the last one, and promptly integrated it, first into the Lisa and then in the Macintosh, attracting several key researchers to work in his company.[4]

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I'm sure lots of companies have used other companies ideas.

What is left out of that statement was, he used it with Xeroxes permission. Xerox had no idea what they had.

 

[Lennholm]

Google betrayed Apple Article

This trusted NYT source, describes the true nature of Google's view on Apple... My friend don't get sucked into Google, it's a company that only does search and maps well.. nothing else. They have no culture, or artist.

And if it was anybody else besides Steve, then who really cares

Don't get sucked in...!? please, I'm happily free of any religious or cultist mentality and free of any unhealthy loyalty towards a company, unlike many people on these and other forums.

 

[macsmurf]

Pi billion dollars is just a number between 3.1 and 3.2 billion, so what's wrong with that?

It's irrational.

 

[marksman]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8G4 Safari/6533.18.5)

Can I get a source for that factoid, big guy? From everything I've read, Google didn't take the auction very seriously and really didn't want the patents that bad.

Actually despite the odd bids, they did take it seriously, but went in with a maximum amount they were willing to spend. Once the bids exceeded 4 billion, Google was done. What does it matter if the the bids weren't perfectly rounded up to the million or billion when the winning bid was half a billion over their max.

It's a shame that innovation is giving way to buying up patents and extracting fees to kill off competition.

Good point. Apple never innovates anything.

 

[gaz81]

What is left out of that statement was, he used it with Xeroxes permission. Xerox had no idea what they had.

Yeah, I'm not saying he stole it. Just saying it was xerox that came up with the first GUI type interface. Lots of companies use it, but didn't come up with it.