Apple Has Outright Ownership of Nortel's LTE (4G) Patents?

[ssk2]

Why do people:

a) think this will obliterate Google?
b) want to obliterate Google?

Seriously, why is a Google, a company that is made up of thousands of normal, working people, that puts out some good products, so hated by many on here? Why do you want to see another company destroyed? How on earth can you hate a company (which is an abstract legal concept) so much?

It just blows my mind...

 

[gnasher729]

If RIM, as a part of this consortium received a paid-up license to use all of the Nortel patents in exchange for their 770 million dollars, what would happen if RIM were acquired by another company? Would the acquiring company also inherit the paid up license to use all of those patents?

That's why you pay a lawyer to write a contract. You can be sure that there are pages and pages of contracts that have been signed, and a small detail like this has been taken care of. Most likely if for example Google bought RIM, they would be allowed to continue selling Blackberries under the license, but they would not use the license for any Android phones.

 

[Missfortune]

Woop!

Talk about a power position. Wow.

Totally! Well done Apple.

 

[gkpm]

Why do people:

b) want to obliterate Google?

Maybe because Google is like a fungus?

Google bought Keyhole, turned it into Google Maps, and made it impossible for anybody else to compete as a mapping company in the mapping space.

You’ve seen fairy rings in the forest, a ring of mushrooms? The real living organism’s underground, the mycelium. It absorbs all the nutrients from that spot, completely absorbs all the nutrients and nothing else can grow there and then it grows in the next margin out, so you get this expanding circle and nothing can compete with the mushroom.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/paul-saffo-qa-2011-6#ixzz1RDq9YWM9

Doesn't it sound similar to Android as well? Google bought the company, paid for more development and gave it away free to take over the mobile market.

By giving half baked (beta in Google's words) stuff away for free they are eroding industry after industry and killing off any chance of competition, unless others use Google's ad-supported model, where they dominate.

Fungus can be good and delicious, but not when they take over the whole forest. Then it may be time to kill it off.

Also because when the regulator wants to look at how much the fungus has grown, the fungus builds a huge wall with 18 lobbyist companies (and growing) around itself:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/07/04/google_lobbyists/

 

[Thunderhawks]

Why does it make sense for them to have patents for LTE/4G? They aren't a carrier. Are they going to build a 4G network that only Apple devices can use? (That would be in character for them, wouldn't it...?) Or are they just going to sit on them and extract fees for their use, just because they can, and it increases their power in the business? (Oh, right, that's how business works...)

I know I'm skeptical that having these patents in Apple's hands will be a good thing for consumers. Especially given their track record in terms of working with other companies, or the rates they offer their developers and content providers.

I'm still not convinced that our patent system does more good than harm.

It makes sense for them as LTE is for now the thing until the next innovation in speed.

Instead of spending millions of legal dollars to figure out who owns what, they now own a big part of it.

They will IMO license things out for two reasons:

1) They want that money back
2) They will be forced to by the government

 

[Adriasil]

I think people are missing the point, with both the Samsung and Apple products. HTC phones wipe the floor with both of them.

 

[840quadra]

I think people are missing the point, with both the Samsung and Apple products. HTC phones wipe the floor with both of them.

You went through the entire forum registration process just to post that pot shot?

 

[kdarling]

.. Talk about control, you can thank Verizon for their heavy handed control of wanting a piece of every action on the cell phone, hence curtailing the many different apps that we would have been denied had it not been for Jobs.

You're thinking of dumbphones. Verizon's (and most carriers') smartphones have almost always been able to download any app from anywhere.

What Jobs did was to take the dumbphone walled garden concept and lower the bar of entry for developers, while retaining similar control and royalty taking.

...At this point there are already 100 models of smart phones on the market (even doing multi-touch without a license), but the iPhone is still king of the hill. ...

What license do you think is needed for multi-touch?

 

[*LTD*]

I think people are missing the point, with both the Samsung and Apple products. HTC phones wipe the floor with both of them.

Wrong website. Try here:

http://phandroid.com/

 

[bassboat]

You're thinking of dumbphones. Verizon's (and most carriers') smartphones have almost always been able to download any app from anywhere.

What Jobs did was to take the dumbphone walled garden concept and lower the bar of entry for developers, while retaining similar control and royalty taking.



What license do you think is needed for multi-touch?

My simple point missed by most but not all, was that Apple brought a smart phone to the market that other lazy, non-innovation companies would even try to do. It is my opinion that these phone manufacturers were taking what the carriers would allow to be made. As I recall Jobs was ready to do his own cell phone network in competition with the major carriers. Did you see Nokia, Samsung, Motorola or any of the rest ready to take it to that level in order to bring an easy to use phone with a lot of features to the market. Think about it, Apple had no phone 5 years ago and now everyone is shooting at them. Give them credit where it is do without malice. When some company comes up with a phone that blows Apple out of the water it will not be because of posts like these, it will be because of consumers voting with their billfolds.

 

[alent1234]

I never said LTE phones were out in 2007. I said they are out now ITW. But thanks for the flowers...

My post was and is just to remember you that your so-called 'most innovative company on the planet' intentionally delivers lower grade hardware components - but the RDF kicks in so it is *magical*.

Apple's history of the iPhone is one of marketing genius. Considering the product, it's really meh. And yes, I perfectly see that none of you ever cared about other mobiles. But it's great to see a forum bashing Google for data-mining while they are all collecting location-based data and soon will deploy *their whole life in form of documents* on Apple based servers.

Now come out blind followers and crucify your Galilei.

how is the hardware lower grade? iphone 4 had the fastest CPU/GPU in mobile when it came out. the A5 CPU is a screamer on my ipad.

i have an android phone and the software is crap compared to iOS. i also looked at the atrix and word on the internet was that the tegra 2 was mostly hype and that the software was crap as well. only reason i'm on android is the 4.3" screen and the $20 phone price

 

[shompa]

I'm a fan of Apple, but I think it's pathetic that Apple (or Google) would buy patents to "hobble" their biggest competitor. The iPhone is a better phone because of the competition with Android. I have no problems with them protecting their own intellectual property like they are doing with Samsung and their blatant ripoff of the iPhone. But to buy patents for the sole purpose of hurting the competition is anti-competitive, and wrong IMO.

I do realize that in the end, it's not really Apple's fault and that they are just playing by the rules of the game. If they hadn't ponied up the $2B, then Google would have done the same to "hobble" Apple. So I don't blame Apple entirely, and instead blame the entire environment created by the awful existing system. But in the end, the consumers lose, which sucks.

There is a huge different between Apple and Google.

Apple innovated the whole iPhone concept. Touch interface with gestures. Every single Android phone is a copy of it.
Google did not invent Android. They bought Android + Handsprings and cloned Android from iPhone prototypes.

In worst case for Android: they would have to pay a fee for 4G to Apple. That is nothing strange since Android makers already pay licensing fee to Microsoft between 5-12 dollars per Android phone. Yes. Google loves to break patents and force its customer to pay royalties for their stolen goods.

If Google had won the patent they would have made an cross licensing agreement with Apple: "yes. We copied the iPhone, let us license it. Here, you get 4G instead"

 

[Rodimus Prime]

My simple point missed by most but not all, was that Apple brought a smart phone to the market that other lazy, non-innovation companies would even try to do. It is my opinion that these phone manufacturers were taking what the carriers would allow to be made. As I recall Jobs was ready to do his own cell phone network in competition with the major carriers. Did you see Nokia, Samsung, Motorola or any of the rest ready to take it to that level in order to bring an easy to use phone with a lot of features to the market. Think about it, Apple had no phone 5 years ago and now everyone is shooting at them. Give them credit where it is do without malice. When some company comes up with a phone that blows Apple out of the water it will not be because of posts like these, it will be because of consumers voting with their billfolds.

Apple never was going to run its own cell network. I do believe they looked into it to see if it was possible but as soon as they got the cost required to get it off the ground they said screw it. Plus they would of never been able to handle the bandwidth demand.

As for the iPhone Apple had some leg up on everyone when it came out. It did not have legacy devices to deal with so it could start fresh. It could speck everything out exaclty how it wanted.

Look at who took off in the past few years. You have Android and iOS. They were able to start fresh. Palm started fresh but were hurt by not having deep enough pockets. Time will tell how HP pocket will help them.
MS market share dropped low enough that they could start fresh and it looks fairly promising and MS is using its very deep pockets to get things going and doing fairly well. It is having faster App growth than the others hitting mile stones at a much faster pace than Android or iOS did. Plus once people start using it they seem to really like it.

RIM marketshare was always way to great for it to do a reboot so they have been rather trap moving much more slowly and it shows. While they are bleeding marketshare they are still having growth and they are still very strong in enterprise. RIM will not risk enterprise for the consumer market it.

 

[shompa]

I think people are missing the point, with both the Samsung and Apple products. HTC phones wipe the floor with both of them.

1) HTC pays Microsoft 5 dollar for every sold Android.
2) If you are an American: You support shipping jobs outside of USA.
3) If you look at benchmarks with the latest Android phones to iPhone 4: They barely beat iPhone in real world benchmarks. Why? Apples A5 has NOVA SIMD Extensions in its processor, something non of the other ARM users have. The latest HTC also have 50% less battery time. It does not work shooting video in 1920x1080 since it is not constant frame rate (it does 10-30 fps = useless)
4) 5% of Android phones have been infected by malware. Great work Google. Unix has been secure since 1960. It took Google to make it insecure by installing apps as Root.
5) Buy Android if you like have no syncing software. It is real fun to play around in Explorer and drag files back and fore. This is 1970 computing.
6) Buy Android if you like to be a system integrator. You need to install a firewall. Install apps for saving battery including appkiller. Out of the box you have 3 hours battery time.
7) If you think 1 dollar is to expensive of an app. Use Android and do as all other Android users and use pirated apps. There are pirate apps stores that let you download anything you want free.
8) Pray that HTC update your OS. Google support the phone for 18 month, but the problem is that every single telephone maker needs to compile its own version and its own gui. You have to wait at least 6 month after an Google official release before your phone get updated.
9) Pray that the apps work. There are over 200 telephones running Android with different OS versions + different hardware. The poor developer needs to validate against 200+ phones to know that the app work. Fragmentation is stupid.

Apple users are prepared to use Android when it is better. Android users would never use Apple products. I don't understand that religious stand.

 

[bassboat]

Apple never was going to run its own cell network. I do believe they looked into it to see if it was possible but as soon as they got the cost required to get it off the ground they said screw it. Plus they would of never been able to handle the bandwidth demand.

As for the iPhone Apple had some leg up on everyone when it came out. It did not have legacy devices to deal with so it could start fresh. It could speck everything out exaclty how it wanted.

Look at who took off in the past few years. You have Android and iOS. They were able to start fresh. Palm started fresh but were hurt by not having deep enough pockets. Time will tell how HP pocket will help them.
MS market share dropped low enough that they could start fresh and it looks fairly promising and MS is using its very deep pockets to get things going and doing fairly well. It is having faster App growth than the others hitting mile stones at a much faster pace than Android or iOS did. Plus once people start using it they seem to really like it.

RIM marketshare was always way to great for it to do a reboot so they have been rather trap moving much more slowly and it shows. While they are bleeding marketshare they are still having growth and they are still very strong in enterprise. RIM will not risk enterprise for the consumer market it.

All good points but still doesn't address the question of why the other companies sat on their hands until Apple showed them how to do it and the untapped market that existed. As for Apple not starting their own network you are probably right but AT&T didn't take the chance that they couldn't pull it off. They blinked.

 

[Rodimus Prime]

1) HTC pays Microsoft 5 dollar for every sold Android. We do not know for sure. HTC also makes WP7 and MS could be giving them a better deal there so they could publicly say they have a deal on Android.
2) If you are an American: You support shipping jobs outside of USA. That applies to just about anything including the iPhone so what is your point there
3) If you look at benchmarks with the latest Android phones to iPhone 4: They barely beat iPhone in real world benchmarks. Why? Apples A5 has NOVA SIMD Extensions in its processor, something non of the other ARM users have. The latest HTC also have 50% less battery time. It does not work shooting video in 1920x1080 since it is not constant frame rate (it does 10-30 fps = useless)If you are talking about the Thunderbolt not exactly relevant there. Thunderbolt is first gen LTE tech. Battery drainer
4) 5% of Android phones have been infected by malware. Great work Google. Unix has been secure since 1960. It took Google to make it insecure by installing apps as Root. Source on this one. I am going to call massive BS here. Also source on bench mark proof.
5) Buy Android if you like have no syncing software. It is real fun to play around in Explorer and drag files back and fore. This is 1970 computing. BS again. If you want to syncing most of the manufactures provide software that does it. Music video you can easily use Double Twist and it handles everything pulling and updating from iTunes.
6) Buy Android if you like to be a system integrator. You need to install a firewall. Install apps for saving battery including appkiller. Out of the box you have 3 hours battery time. BS there. You do not need a task killer or a firewall. This is standard FUD
7) If you think 1 dollar is to expensive of an app. Use Android and do as all other Android users and use pirated apps. There are pirate apps stores that let you download anything you want free.There is jailbroken iPhones that pirate Apps. This is again BS.
8) Pray that HTC update your OS. Google support the phone for 18 month, but the problem is that every single telephone maker needs to compile its own version and its own gui. You have to wait at least 6 month after an Google official release before your phone get updated. You miss the agreement. The manufactures support the phone for 18 months. Not Google. It is an agreement that the manufactures and carriers get a much more timely update. 3 months is good amount of time. 6 months I agree is insane.
9) Pray that the apps work. There are over 200 telephones running Android with different OS versions + different hardware. The poor developer needs to validate against 200+ phones to know that the app work. Fragmentation is stupid.
FUD. This is pure BS and you do not know what you are talking about it
Apple users are prepared to use Android when it is better. Android users would never use Apple products. I don't understand that religious stand.what the hell. I like my Android phone, I like my iPod and use an iPod every day. I own a Macbook, I encourage my parents to buy a Mac and they did. Both my brother and sister use macs. Yes my primary computer now is a windows computer but it is a better tool for what I need it to do. I like most android users am in the boat right tool for the right job. Do not relay on Apple to cover it all.

See my responses in Bold to most of your FUD and BS.

All good points but still doesn't address the question of why the other companies sat on their hands until Apple showed them how to do it and the untapped market that existed. As for Apple not starting their own network you are probably right but AT&T didn't take the chance that they couldn't pull it off. They blinked.

Umm it did address it. Look at what I said. Most of them had to much invested in what they put out in 2003-2005 range if not earlier. Smart phones were starting to take off before Apple hit the market. They were trap on older hardware and software.
Market share needed to drop low enough for them to be able to reboot or they needed to be new to the market it.

Rim is the only one who marketshare had not drop low enough for a reboot.

 

[Bilbo63]

What's stopping Google from buying RIM and getting both the Blackberry maker and the Nokia patents in one fell swoop? (and a discount, I might add)

Then again if Apple in fact has "sole ownership" of 4G patents and others that would help them cripple Android, it may not help Google much in potential future patent suits.

 

[shompa]

Why do people:

a) think this will obliterate Google?
b) want to obliterate Google?

Seriously, why is a Google, a company that is made up of thousands of normal, working people, that puts out some good products, so hated by many on here? Why do you want to see another company destroyed? How on earth can you hate a company (which is an abstract legal concept) so much?

It just blows my mind...

Google is hated for many reasons:
They sat i Apples boardroom. The Android phone is a direct clone of iPhone prototypes. No own innovation. Google just bought Android, Handsprings and cloned iPhone.

Goolge sniffs open Wifi Networks. They take picture of our houses with satellites. They have street view that map out homes. Google stores every single search you have done in your life. You can't get them to delete this.

Google loves to have you documents and mail so they can data mine to get better advertising rates.

Android does not respect your privacy. They share your telephone number, location. gender and more just to data mine and get more advertising money. Google does not care about security. 5% of Android phones are already infected by malware. This does not affect Googles adverting rates.

Google lie and brainwash people. Just look at Chrome. It has about 20% of the browser market. All chrome users: Safari sux. Chrome rules. Chrome uses just does not understand that both uses Webkit for rendering.

Goolge does not follow standards. They love to buy stuff and make it their standard. For example their own video and audio codec. What is wrong with that? 1) Companies using those codecs can be sued. Googel does not care. 2) For us consumers it is bad since no graphic chip can accelerate these codecs. Less battery time. Phones/computer that can't play those files.

Google have no respect for copyright. Over 90% of youtube clips are pirated. Google knows that over 90% of Android phones uses pirated software, Google does not care, since they only want to sell you advertising. In fact: Androids main selling point is pirated software and emulators. Exactly the same tactic that MSFT used for their windows.

Google search engine is the world largest link collection to wares. Somehow they get away with it. Piratebay get years in prison and million of fines for providing exact same service.

Google has many times get caught using open software where they have simple remover the the author part. This is the reason why companies that uses Google products can get sued. For example: Android makers that have to pay licensing fees to Microsoft for every single sold Android phone. Google does not care. They want to sell advertising.

There are many MANY more examples.

The only thing Fandroids have is: It is open. Apple is closed and evil.
Apple uses are stupid. They only pay for the brand. You get more hardware for the same price with Android/Dell.

But without Apple: How much have Google innovated in Phones? Or MSFT in operation system? Support the innovators!

last:
They have done huge surveys about this:
Apple users are prepared buy Android if it is better.
Android uses would never buy any Apple product.

Most Apple uses use MSFT windows too
Almost no windows uses use Apple (because it is "bad". It is only designer products and you get more hardware with a home build/dell machine)

 

[shompa]

See my responses in Bold to most of your FUD and BS.




Umm it did address it. Look at what I said. Most of them had to much invested in what they put out in 2003-2005 range if not earlier. Smart phones were starting to take off before Apple hit the market. They were trap on older hardware and software.
Market share needed to drop low enough for them to be able to reboot or they needed to be new to the market it.

Rim is the only one who marketshare had not drop low enough for a reboot.

Every single Android make have to pay license fee to MS.
I see no point argument with you since you don't even know this fact.
You could have Googled 1 minute and checked that fact. You can do it with everything else I wrote. It is all fact.

Your points are just speculation and dreaming. It is impossible to have a discussion then.

I tell you: The earth is round. And you tell: FUD. Its flat.

Microsoft today makes over 300 million dollars in licensing fees for Android vendors. They make more on Android phones then Windows Mobile. Windows mobile license is 15 dollar. So MS actually don't care to much about if you use Android or WinMo, they make the same money.

So far 5 Android vendors have signed up with MSFT. Between 5-12 dollar per Android phone. Nothing to do with WinMo7.

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/070511-microsoft-patent-android.html

 

[rjohnstone]

Google is hated for many reasons:
*SNIP*

Your post is pure exaggeration and plain old ignorant FUD.
There's so much BS in your post it could fertilize all the farms in the midwest.

If you're going to give percentages I suggest you provide facts and sources to back them up.

 

[shompa]

What's stopping Google from buying RIM and getting both the Blackberry maker and the Nokia patents in one fell swoop? (and a discount, I might add)

Then again if Apple in fact has "sole ownership" of 4G patents and others that would help them cripple Android, it may not help Google much in potential future patent suits.

They would have to pay over 25 billion for Nokia.
Remember. Google does not care. The Android telephone makes have to pay the licensing fee. And the fee is just a couple of dollar/phone. Not worth 25 billion.

RIM: If we are talking the Nortel patents: They are probably not transferable.

If Nokia can break its crazy deal with MSFT they are a great buy for Google, if Google wants to build their own hardware. Until last year Nokia made billions of profit on phones that had ASP on 100 dollars. They could do that because they have their own factories. These factories is something that make Nokia real interesting for a takeover.

(I have worked within Ericsson and Nokia. Both companies killed thanks to MSFT, but that is another story)

 

[bassboat]

See my responses in Bold to most of your FUD and BS.We disagree. While they had semi-smart phones they were cumbersome, been working on them for how long? and did not stand up to the carriers as Apple did.




Umm it did address it. Look at what I said. Most of them had to much invested in what they put out in 2003-2005 range if not earlier. Smart phones were starting to take off before Apple hit the market. They were trap on older hardware and software.
Market share needed to drop low enough for them to be able to reboot or they needed to be new to the market it.

Rim is the only one who marketshare had not drop low enough for a reboot.

We disagree. While they had semi-smart phones they were cumbersome, been working on them for how long? and did not stand up to the carriers as Apple did.

 

[McGee]

Let's not forget, if Apple hadn't developed the iPhone - for years in secrecy, this form factor phone wouldn't exist. If Apple hadn't done the same with the iPad, tablets wouldn't exist.

Samsung, etc, wouldn't know what to do. There'd be nothing to copy.

This form factor? Ummm the LG Prada with the same basic form factor was made a year earlier in 2006. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Prada_(KE850)

Also remember if it wasn't for Palm and Blackberry Apple probably wouldn't have even thought of developing the smart phone.

 

[cmaier]

This form factor? Ummm the LG Prada with the same basic form factor was made a year earlier in 2006. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Prada_(KE850)

Also remember if it wasn't for Palm and Blackberry Apple probably wouldn't have even thought of developing the smart phone.

And those companies didn't Borrow a lot from the Newton?

 

[Rodimus Prime]

Every single Android make have to pay license fee to MS.
I see no point argument with you since you don't even know this fact.
You could have Googled 1 minute and checked that fact. You can do it with everything else I wrote. It is all fact.

Your points are just speculation and dreaming. It is impossible to have a discussion then.

I tell you: The earth is round. And you tell: FUD. Its flat.

Microsoft today makes over 300 million dollars in licensing fees for Android vendors. They make more on Android phones then Windows Mobile. Windows mobile license is 15 dollar. So MS actually don't care to much about if you use Android or WinMo, they make the same money.

So far 5 Android vendors have signed up with MSFT. Between 5-12 dollar per Android phone. Nothing to do with WinMo7.

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/070511-microsoft-patent-android.html

1) you are moving the goal post. I was responding to htc.

2) I belive most of the other 5 make windows phones or use windows on other hardware. Who knows if to sweeten the pot so to speak ms cut them a deal elsewhere.

You past over everything else but you also posted a bunch of android hate and Google FUD.