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Apple and Ericsson Reach Licensing Agreement to Settle Dispute Over Cellular Patents

The Cappy said:
give you a very realistic and non-partisan explanation for why you can't actually pin this entirely on one party, as you clearly want to.
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A very reasonable explanation. Given Ericsson's release stated:

"Agreement includes global cross-license for patented cellular standard-essential technologies and grants certain other patent rights."

It is also possible Apple held patents that Ericsson may have violated, and so both parties decided an agreement was best; which is a usual outcome between big companies.
 
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The Cappy said:
Meaning that you're trying to dodge criticism of your own highly partisan opinion by preemptively calling names. You've been studying the Putin theory of argument, I see. But I'll take your bait and give you a very realistic and non-partisan explanation for why you can't actually pin this entirely on one party, as you clearly want to.

Consider a situation where there are 2 parties. One has a thriving product, and the other used to have a thriving product but now mainly sells licenses to essential patents that are, because they're essential patents, supposed to be FRAND. But, taking advantage of the essential nature of those patents, the second party demands a price far in excess of what other essential patent holders ask for their licenses, and also more than it charges party 3, 4, and 5. Party 1 considers that a violation of FRAND. Party 1 says, "We're fully willing to pay a FRAND price, but party 2 is asking unreasonable and discriminatory fees." Both parties feel they're in the right. What will happen is that the two parties will litigate and eventually (hopefully) come to some quasi-amicable solution. Each party looks at the other and says, "I was fully ready to pay/license but the other guy's terms were outrageous." A reasonable person could look at this and imagine that Party 1 was probably asking a miser's price, and Party 2 was asking for an amount that was neither fair nor nondiscriminatory. But a really rabid fan-boy of party 2 or a really rabid troll hating party 1 will instead eagerly rush to say, "See? All party 1 ever does is steal!" And gosh. That was you. I'm sure you know exactly how much Ericsson asked initially, and how much the other essential patent holders were getting, though. Because you'd never just jump in like an idiot and start calling names before you actually knew all the facts. Would you?
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If apple felt the fees were unfair why did they originally pay them?
 
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jlc1978 said:
A very reasonable explanation. Given Ericsson's release stated:

"Agreement includes global cross-license for patented cellular standard-essential technologies and grants certain other patent rights."

It is also possible Apple held patents that Ericsson may have violated, and so both parties decided an agreement was best; which is a usual outcome between big companies.
Click to expand...

Apple does in fact hold a ton of cellular/networking patents, most of which are from their acquisition of Nortel's portfolio and Intel's cellular division. The point of purchasing, is as a counter measure to make sure they aren't screwed by being unfairly charged exorbitant fees by other companies for use of FRAND standards based IP.

Which has been the issue with most of the cases Apple has been involved in, where fanboys declare Apple is "stealing as usual". The outcome of just about all of those cases has been to pay what is fairly owed and enter cross licensing agreements.
 
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Naraxus said:
Yup. They've done it their entire existance. They're a company built on the theft of others ip. From Xerox PARC to Steve Jobs's laughable claim that they "invented multitouch" (when in fact it was showcased years before the iPhone) but what else can you expect from a company whose unofficial motto is "Good artists copy, great artists steal."?
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Not this crap again... Apple didn't steal anything from Xerox. Two things came out of Apple's visit to Xerox, #1 the idea of creating a GUI and #2 how significant Steve Jobs thought OOP was going to be. The whole reason for Steve and other Apple engineers going to Xerox was because Apple had just created an extremely efficient graphics engine (QuickDraw) and were wondering what they could do with it. So a friend of Steve's took them to see what Xerox's PARC was doing with graphics. BTW, there were literally a dozen or so companies at that time developing GUI based operating systems, this was not an "invention" of Xerox PARC, they were just another pioneer in that industry. Furthermore, Xerox originally had no desire to create an actual product so many of those engineers left PARC for Apple.

Apple bought "FingerWorks" who are in fact credited with creating "multitouch". Apple used the tech for years in their notebook track pads before acquiring them (and their IP) for the iPhone.

And you obviously don't understand the meaning of that saying, which basically means taking an idea and making it your own by making it so much better it becomes something greater than the original, hence "stealing" it.
 
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obviouslogic said:
Apple bought "FingerWorks" who are in fact credited with creating "multitouch". Apple used the tech for years in their notebook track pads before acquiring them (and their IP) for the iPhone.
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Apple bought them in 2005, but didn't use the tech in trackpads until 2008
 
jlc1978 said:
A very reasonable explanation. Given Ericsson's release stated:

"Agreement includes global cross-license for patented cellular standard-essential technologies and grants certain other patent rights."

It is also possible Apple held patents that Ericsson may have violated, and so both parties decided an agreement was best; which is a usual outcome between big companies.
Click to expand...

It's like the Tech Industry's version of a Prisoner-of-War swap. 🤣
 
AppleTree01 said:
Does this have any impact on apples rumored in house modem?
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Not really. Apple is paying for the patents now, and would certainly not get off that hook by making their own hardware.
Ericsson is one of the key players in wireless networking, and one of the main developers of the 5G standard. You're not going to be implementing cellular phones without using a lot of their IP.
 
UnusedLoginID said:
Ericsson... I thought they went the way of Nokia... oh, wait, they did... it's all about the IP!
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That's true for Nokia's mobile phones, but Nokia's main business has been networking equipment. They had their own division and also gobbled up the former ones from AT&T (briefly spun off as "Lucent") (which is how Bell Labs is now owned by Nokia), Alcatel, Motorola, Siemens, and I feel like I forgot a few.

Ericsson, too, is a giant in that area. As is Huawei, of course.
 
chucker23n1 said:
Apple bought them in 2005, but didn't use the tech in trackpads until 2008
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Not completely true... as that article states in 2008 Apple adopted their gesture technology to enable adding more functionality to the track pad (this was a year after being introduced in the iPhone). Apple's laptops had long been able to support/detect more than one finger at a time but it was more rudimentary, but those tackpads were in fact based off FingerWorks technology. Because of that and their continued developments into advanced multitouch (and Apple knowing how important it was going be; iPhone, iPad, etc.), Apple decide to acquire the company.
 
obviouslogic said:
Not completely true... as that article states in 2008 Apple adopted their gesture technology to enable adding more functionality to the track pad (this was a year after being introduced in the iPhone). Apple's laptops had long been able to support/detect more than one finger at a time but it was more rudimentary,
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This is true. Two-finger tap and scroll arrived much earlier.



obviouslogic said:
but those tackpads were in fact based off FingerWorks technology.
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I don’t believe that’s true. As far as I recall, a FingerWorks controller didn’t appear until the Air.

 
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