Most people are saying this is just a negotiation play by both parties There will be an agreement eventually on a "fair" price. One party will get a bit more or less than they wanted. No high drama.
You can save your outrage for some other thread
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Apple Faces Ericsson Lawsuit After Refusing Licensing Deal
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Most people are saying this is just a negotiation play by both parties There will be an agreement eventually on a "fair" price. One party will get a bit more or less than they wanted. No high drama.
You can save your outrage for some other thread
.
Are you really comparing Ericsson with patent trolls like Smartflash? Really?
Please, for your own sake google ericsson and see what they used to do, and what they do today. Then look at Apple-Ericsson agreement in the past. Little bit of reading could do you no harm
On this one, I'm with Ericsson all the way.
Totally reasonable
It's a business dispute. Take it to court and they'll decide who's being the jerk. Here's a software patent that's real. Think it's not? You write an LTE protocol then.
It's a business dispute. Take it to court and they'll decide who's being the jerk. Here's a software patent that's real. Think it's not? You write an LTE protocol then.
Are you sure it says "not essential" and not "essential"? If these patents are "not essential" then Apple had no reason to use them and has to pay whatever Ericsson asks for or stop using it. If the patents are "essential to LTE standards" then Ericsson has agreed to not charge more than a "fair and reasonable" rate. Obviously there may be disagreement between Apple and Ericsson what "fair and reasonable" means.
They can't suddenly just stop putting the chips and get other chips. Maybe they can do that iPhone 7 onwards. Not even with the 6S.
As usual, paying a licensing fee acknowledges that paying a license fee is cheaper than going to court. Thinking that the patents might be valid probably helps with that decision, but buy paying Apple hasn't acknowledged anything about validity of these patents.
And Apple apparently doesn't want to pay what Ericsson asks for, not "Apple doesn't want to pay". The rest is true. Apple will pay, but the question is how much. Probably what Apple claims is reasonable < what Apple thinks is reasonable < what Apple pays < what Ericsson thinks is reasonable < what Ericsson claims is reasonable.
Most people are saying this is just a negotiation play by both parties There will be an agreement eventually on a "fair" price. One party will get a bit more or less than they wanted. No high drama.
You can save your outrage for some other thread
No, it's appropriate for this thread. It really, really is.
Lawyers obviously prefer to file where they think have the best chances.
- Apple, for example, loves to file in Northern California, near their home base.
- Many companies file in East Texas because those courts are reputed to lean towards patent holders, not the infringers.
- The first time that Nokia sued Apple over non-payments, they filed in Delaware, asking for a jury trial. Delaware is the second-most friendly state towards patent holders after Texas. It's also well known for being able to handle very complicated patent cases.
No, because the chip maker doesn't control what manufacturers do with their chips.
Think of it this way: anyone can buy CPU chips at a set price. However, if you plan to use those chips to build an MP3 player, you'd better plan to also pay royalties to someone. The maker of the CPU chip is not responsible for what you do with that chip.
For example, let's say that for a remote data transmitter, you buy the latest radio chip that is capable of GSM, GSM/HSDPA, CDMA, LTE, WiFi, Bluetooth, etc. However, you only plan to use GSM 2G. Why would you want to pay a hefty built-in fee for all the other standards? You don't. You only want to pay for what you need.
Even Qualcomm charges separately for their own patents. Every company ... even Apple ... pays two prices to Qualcomm. First, there's the base price of the chip itself. Secondly, there's an IP royalty that's calculated by what the price of your device will be.
E.g. Apple pays Qualcomm $15 per chip, PLUS another 3% of the "price" of the iPhone... which Apple has cleverly negotiated to be the low ~$240 price they pay Foxconn, not what they later charge the consumer.
Statement from Apple:
With tens of thousands of innovative employees, Apple has deep respect for intellectual property. Weve always been willing to pay a fair price to secure the rights to standards essential patents covering technology in our products. Unfortunately, we have not been able to agree with Ericsson on a fair rate for their patents so, as a last resort, we are asking the courts for help.
http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/27/er...censing-seeks-to-block-iphone-and-ipad-sales/
With tens of thousands of innovative employees, Apple has deep respect for intellectual property. Weve always been willing to pay a fair price to secure the rights to standards essential patents covering technology in our products. Unfortunately, we have not been able to agree with Ericsson on a fair rate for their patents so, as a last resort, we are asking the courts for help.
http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/27/er...censing-seeks-to-block-iphone-and-ipad-sales/
don't let any factual knowledge of the actual parties involved come between you and your opinion, einstein
patent trol
People should get off this site and read other sites, Ericsson counter sued Apple already over this and asked the courts to set a fair license fee, Apple still refused, Ericsson has now requested the ITC in America to block all iPhone shipments into the US based on its patents infringements.
This will get messy. It seems every argument to defend Apple on this thread has already been covered by Ericsson's actions.
Source:
http://9to5mac.com/2015/02/27/ericsson-itc-iphone-ban/
This will get messy. It seems every argument to defend Apple on this thread has already been covered by Ericsson's actions.
Source:
http://9to5mac.com/2015/02/27/ericsson-itc-iphone-ban/
Although it wasn't obvious, my comment was in jest.
I was being nice... Apples business practices can be predatory, a characteristic I despise.
Apple knows it's going to pay. They just thought that Ericsson demands were excessive. As others have stated, Apple is just trying to pay less. In the end, both Apple and Ericsson will compromise and the lawsuit will go away.
I think this won't go to mediation first because it's a non -essential patent that I don't believe could be covered under FRAND licensing. There's no legal obligation for Ericcson to license the technology at all to Apple. Because of this, there's no forced reason to require 3rd party negotiator.
Ericcson is completely 100% in their right to say to appple "you cannot use this unless you pay". Apple in the past, willingly paid for the license, so it accepts that it is a valid Patent.
What it really boils down to, is Apple refused to new terms, and instead of stopping use of the technology in question, continued to use it anyways.
Arrogance. Thats what that is.
Like a master con artist, Apples clever and knows how to create a warm fuzzy statement that appeals to the masses. They have that in common with the head orator.
It's all wonderful until decoded...
say what you want.
But when Apple decided to no longer pay for the license terms, they were no longer legally entitled to use the technology and MUST legally have stopped conntinuing to use the tech.
They did not.
Analogy time:
You sign up for a gym. after 1 year, you stop paying that gym. But you continue to go to the gym anyways and use the equipment. The Gym asks you to pay back the membership fees for the time you've gone to the gym without paying, and you go "nahhhhhhhhhh" but continue to show up at the gym anyways.
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Boohooo apple.
Don't care. As the patent holder, Ericsson is entitled to asking from Apple, exactly what they believe is fair for the licensing terms.
that is free market.
Apple has the choice to pay it. Negotiate down if there's that ability, or walk.
they do not have any right to continue unlicensed use just because they don't like the price that the license is set at.
Thats like the old tired argument over piracy. "I pirate music because $20 a CD is too expensive"
just because you dont want to, nor can afford something, doesn't give you a right to it for free
If all patents were all actually valid (patent office actually did their job) and they didn't need to be ascertained at trials by total neophytes of both the tech and industry, and awards were fair representation of what they were worth instead of off the cuff evals from neophytes to both tech and industry, I wouldn't care one bit were they're they're filed. It wouldn't matter at all.
But, venue shopping seems to play on the fact that indeed, east Texas juries never for one second thinks that the patent office's software patents should not have been given in the first place (assume they know what their doing (sic)) and seemingly completely disregard current licensing standards in their awards, while also seemingly make their awards highly dependent on who they defendant is.
Going by the way they priced smartflash' license, smart phones would cost $5000 each for the thousands of licenses they include and you'd need to sign a waiver to use them ;-).
East Texas, or whatever court, wouldn't matter if the patent office actually did a decent job. Maybe that'S were all efforts should concentrate. Having highly technical proceedings decided by juries, or random judges also seem to need to be reformed. MAybe there could be a US court specialized in such things.
That's the case even for criminal proceedings which have become a battle of expert witnesses were juries are manipulated as much as they are informed.
As for this case, I'm betting to an eventual agreement; like I said. This is nothing like the crap SmartFlash case. That's more like the dance Samsung and Apple enter into before consuming their dirty forbidden relationship ;-)
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One of the synonyms of apparently is supposedly. I said apparently they don't want to pay. You can substitute supposedly if you like, but it still doesn't change the fact that I didn't say Apple doesn't want to pay. I will concede your sentence is better written though.
Apple isn't contesting the validity of the patents. Remember Apple sued first, and sued for excessive royalty request. The question of validity is a red herring introduced by me. It misdirects the discussion away from the topic. It was my mistake for including patent validity in my argument. This case isn't about validity since it's an argument by neither party. It's about how much Apple will eventually pay. Could be $0. Could be $750 million. Most likely somewhere in between.
It SHOULD be based on the actual component, not the overall value of whatever the technology is used in. Seems fair to me that they aren't happy with Erricson suddenly asking for more.
We don't know what Tech is involved. It might be just something extremely standard, that every other tech companies use it without any license whatsoever.
Ericsson, and many others, may just being greedy.
Says who?
It is a good thing to inform a little before posting, if you think that any standard technology is used without paying royalties, it is clear that you don't have read much how essential standards work.