Yes. Motorola was abusing SEPs (check), so they got nothing (check), as they should (check).
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Apple and Samsung Negotiating Agreement to Settle Patent Disputes Out of Court
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Yes. Motorola was abusing SEPs (check), so they got nothing (check), as they should (check).
Again, Samsung SOP.
They could have settled LONG time ago like HTC with Apple.
But according to other article, no matter which company they always fight the suite until they lose, and then settle.
I guess in many cases the patent holder can't continue, or in Apple case win a few of the arguments.
In another article Apple was always trying to settle the dispute, but Samsung denied everything, "there was nothing even close to being the same", and "the sudden change for BB style keyboard phone to full screen iPhone like phones was just a coincidence".
Sony could tell you some stories too.
So Apple wants to settle all of it's patent disputes with all parties.
Sort of reminds me of the Baptism scene from The Godfather.
Sort of reminds me of the Baptism scene from The Godfather.
You won't buy nothing from any company if that company does not have deals for Music and TV shows. Those guys see Apple and are afraid & demand insane amounts of money. Levine and Dre will change that.
It's an important step. Maybe it will even revive the iPod business. Heck, maybe Apple will even make better headphones and earbuds.
Meanwhile, Beats will pay itself soon enough.
Why? They have not lost a lot and the appeals have not ended
Well, if asking $40 pero smartphone is trying to settle, yes, Apple has tried hard to settle
Unfortunately, they will now need to spend even more on legal resources negotiating royalties than hiring lawyers to duke it out in court. Either way, the lawyers will win. This is the reason the USA has the biggest ration of lawyers in the world. 1:320 whereas Japan has about 1:5,000.
If you're ready to sue everyone solely for a matter of pride and justice, you're not letting anything between you and your final target. Unless you're not 100% sure of being on the "right" side
Still have to make a great product and Samsung has done that. How many Kia Amanti's do you see on the road each day?
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I agree with you on basic principle. However, I think the lawyer ratio in the US also has a lot to do with Congress and the way policy/laws are created. No one seems to make the hard choice because of the political ramifications either way. It is way easier to create a soft law/policy, get your political points and the let the lawyers and courts figure out the hard stuff.
The point wasn't to get money - the point was an acknowledgement that Samsung copied Apple's designs. Now that everyone except raging Samsung fanboys agree that Samsung copied Apple and that Samsung will stop doing that, the lawsuits can stop.
Last I checked, Samsung has paid Apple exactly $0 from the billion dollar verdicts. As has been noted, Samsung has a history of appealing verdicts until they become moot. One could easily argue Apple wasted their time since their labors have only produced court victories with no tangible financial benefits.
OT. I hope all this patent litigation goes away. Maybe an ancillary benefit will be Patent Trolls (non-practicing entities) will not find the litigation route as beneficial as it has been in the past.
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The point was never acknowledgement. The point was to make infringement have punitive consequences. If you infringe, you will pay. Only fanboys, both Apple's and Samsung's, really care about "acknowledgement"; which only serves to fuel flamewars.
I do not see Samsung saving much either.
Sure they fine has decreased, but how much has lawyer expenses increased?
And from what was reported, Samsung would not even listen to Apple.
$40 for a $500 device is less than 10%, could have negotiated to 4%.
Then again Jobs was in charge and he would have insisted on a higher amount, but in long run the current fine/expense estimate Samsung faces divided by $40 is 22,500,000 phones at a time when that was still a huge number of Smartphones (2010-11)
HTC probably settled for much less, and likely came out ahead because of it.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
A lot of iHaters are going to have one less topic for their "Apple is Evil" posts.
And vice versa.
Personally, I think this sounds great. Past due. Hopefully, they can not only settle but rebuild the relationship so that great Samsung components can again be found where applicable in Apple products. For all this "Die Samsung Die" sentiment for years now, go over into the threads where there are screens made by Samsung and others or SSD drives, etc and there are many posts by people "hoping to get the Samsung one." Why? Because that generally the best variant within Apple products.
Did Samsung do wrong? Yes. Does Apple do wrong? Yes. That last U.S. court decision found both at fault. I bet if there was a similar battle in Samsung's home country, their courts might see things differently. I bet if there was a mirror SamsungRumors.com website heavily populated by South Koreans, their sentiment of Samsung vs. Apple would be very different too.
In the end, none of these companies can overly win such cases. Ultimately, they have to settle. Else, the infringers who mostly get away with it will keep infringing. Patent law is not world law. Patent punishments are not world-wide punishments. Even a complete victory for Apple would not result in a punishment that would kill the copying (which would basically involve the world refusing the sale of the infringing products). Fines are like slaps on the wrist to these companies. They might work but they might not. They can sting a little but not enough.
?? It's common business practice to buy products or services and rebrand them or continue them as a new owner. Android users probably can tell you more about that.
That has been covered many times before. Apple knows it has to pay royalties on FRAND patents. But because competitors know its Apple, and they have lots of money, expect them to pay more for their licenses then anyone else. Thats not what FRAND is based upon.
I get my facts from the sources (actual court documents, evidence, etc), not from fansite articles.
That does not change the fact that Apple has stalled paying royalties for years, and that judges have negatively commented that Apple has been using the court system to try to lower the rates they'll have to pay.
Patent abuse is patent abuse, whether it's essential or not.
It's just as bad when a SEP holder tries for a intra-negotiation injunction, as when a non-SEP holder runs around suing everyone with similar solutions.
As Judge Posner put it, "You can't just assume that just because someone has a patent, he has deep moral right to exclude everyone else from using it."
I would add that I think this goes double for software patents.
Not being able to get an injunction against Apple, does not mean Motorola won't get paid by Apple. Apple still owes royalties no matter what, and they've been piling up every day for years. Only now, Apple owes those back royalties to Google, since they own the patents.
This has indeed been covered many times before:
Apple refused to cross license. That's their decision, but Apple wanted to be treated special and pay the same lower rates that others got by cross-licensing.
That's hardly fair to the other companies.
Tim originally tried to dissuade Steve from suing Samsung and recommended negotiating with them, so this isn't too surprising. He's probably just been waiting for a legal pause to start up negotiations again with Samsung and Google.
Steve saw what Microsoft did to Apple back in the day when they took the ideas of the Macintosh OS and made Windows, and I think he wanted to make sure it didn't happen again with Samsung. I can't fault him for doing what he did. No creative person wants to see their work copied and sold as a knock-off.
But Tim seems to be a more pragmatic, numbers-minded person than Steve, and not an impassioned creator putting his soul into the products, so I imagine he will find some other way to deal with future infringements. And I'm sure there will be; Samsung's culture is based around copying the work of others and won't stop no matter how these negotiations turn out.
Steve saw what Microsoft did to Apple back in the day when they took the ideas of the Macintosh OS and made Windows, and I think he wanted to make sure it didn't happen again with Samsung. I can't fault him for doing what he did. No creative person wants to see their work copied and sold as a knock-off.
But Tim seems to be a more pragmatic, numbers-minded person than Steve, and not an impassioned creator putting his soul into the products, so I imagine he will find some other way to deal with future infringements. And I'm sure there will be; Samsung's culture is based around copying the work of others and won't stop no matter how these negotiations turn out.