Apple Ordered to Pay Caltech $838 Million for Infringing on WiFi Patents

[SoN1NjA]

How stupid that they would go after the technologies of ****** components anyway -- very bad shame when my $400 Pixel 3a gets 600Mbps vs 450Mbps on my XS

I know speeds aren't the only factors in this stuff, but why not just use the Intel chips that come with Macs anyway, incredible

 

[Doomtomb]

They do the research and pay people wages to research, they need to recoup the money from somewhere. I'm just shocked at the amount, surely this should be FRAND as it's part of 802.11n and 802.11ac Wi-Fi standards. Shouldn't Apple be paying the WiFi consortium and part of that fee goes to Caltech for contributing to the standard?

Paying employees is not a reason to patent troll.

 

[blouis79]

If Caltech did not participate in the 802.11 standards process, they are under no obligation to follow FRAND licensing or patent disclosure rules.

That makes no sense. Standards processes are long and public. There is no excuse for anyone working in such an area to not know about the standards process especially in their area. Apparently there are thousands of patents required to implement 802.11 standards.

Iplytics Study on patents and standards at ieee

So possibly every user of every product using 802.11n and 802.11ac is similarly at fault. Ridiculous. Waiting for the results of appeal....

 

[brewcitywi]

Apple should settle by donating $850M to Caltech scholarship fund.

Apple should settle by donating $850M to Caltech scholarship fund.

Unless I don't understand the entire issue, wouldn't that be an awesome way to settle?

 

[cmaier]

How does a judge decide how much a patent is worth?
Caltech states that it is worth $1.4, but is it a fair price? Did Caltech ask for that and Apple said no or they infringed the patent and lately Caltech asked for money?
It isn't clear reading the articles about the news, I guess Caltech deserves some money for their work, but $838 millions seems like a lot

a jury decides. Either a reasonable royalty or the patentee’s lost Profits.

 

[Jimmdean]

Gotta take the stance here that if you don't create an actual product then your patent is ********.

 

[cmaier]

That makes no sense. Standards processes are long and public. There is no excuse for anyone working in such an area to not know about the standards process especially in their area. Apparently there are thousands of patents required to implement 802.11 standards.

Iplytics Study on patents and standards at ieee

So possibly every user of every product using 802.11n and 802.11ac is similarly at fault. Ridiculous. Waiting for the results of appeal....

it does actually make sense. The rationale between FRAND is that a party should not get to lobby for a standard and then cash in by forcing people to pay an unlimited amount for its patents to actually use the standard.

 

[MacBH928]

After 4 years of battle in court against Apple lawyers, how much of that $838M is left?

The sad state of law is that these long term cases means the plaintiff might as well have passed away and never received "their rights".

 

[konqerror]

That makes no sense. Standards processes are long and public. There is no excuse for anyone working in such an area to not know about the standards process especially in their area. Apparently there are thousands of patents required to implement 802.11 standards.

Iplytics Study on patents and standards at ieee

So possibly every user of every product using 802.11n and 802.11ac is similarly at fault. Ridiculous. Waiting for the results of appeal....

You didn't understand what I said.

Can Apple, Broadcom, Qualcomm get together and say, "I demand you rent your house out to us at market rates?". No. It's private property. Unless you joined their group and signed an agreement to put any properties you own in the pool. Only the government can force you to agree to terms for your property.

Again, companies are under no obligation to participate in any standards process or include their IP in it. A standards process is a voluntary agreement by a group of private organizations. It is not a governmental standard forced upon everybody.

In fact, if you understand FRAND, standards bodies cannot force IP holders to agree to any terms other than FRAND, otherwise the standard body will run into antitrust laws. Look at the patent licensing fragmentation around H.265 as an example.

 

[blouis79]

Caltech could not implement their patents without access to many (hundreds or thousands) other patents required for 802.11. So a cross-licencing deal would reduce the net value of their patents substantially.

 

[falainber]

Paying employees is not a reason to patent troll.

Nobody is trolling Apple here. Did you notice they do not sue other companies (like Samsung)? Maybe that's because other companies just license the tech instead of stealing it (as they are supposed to)? Did you notice how many lawsuits Apple lost in recent months? What's wrong with them? Do they ever pay for using someone else's IP (without being sued)?
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Gotta take the stance here that if you don't create an actual product then your patent is ********.

In this case, Apple would lose most of their patents. More importantly, there is nothing wrong with people getting paid for their inventions. This stimulates the progress.

 

[cmaier]

Nobody is trolling Apple here. Did you notice they do not sue other companies (like Samsung)? Maybe that's because other companies just license the tech instead of stealing it (as they are supposed to)? Did you notice how many lawsuits Apple lost in recent months? What's wrong with them? Do they ever pay for using someone else's IP (without being sued)?
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In this case, Apple would lose most of their patents. More importantly, there is nothing wrong with people getting paid for their inventions. This stimulates the progress.

You are using wifi today, no? So you are infringing. Do you have a license? If not, why are you stealing someone’s IP?

 

[falainber]

You are using wifi today, no? So you are infringing. Do you have a license? If not, why are you stealing someone’s IP?

Why would I be infringing by using WiFi? I don't even use Apple devices which infringe I do have a phone with Qualcomm chip but it's Qualcomm that is infringing not me. I paid for this phone, Qualcomm apparently pocketed the fraction of the price intended to pay for the patents instead of transferring it to CalTech. That's their problem. I am all for CalTech earning their share of money for their inventions. Qualcomm and Apple, on the other hand, could do with less profits. They are profiteering off others IP. Hopefully the courts will fix this.

 

[konqerror]

Why would I be infringing by using WiFi? I don't even use Apple devices which infringe I do have a phone with Qualcomm chip but it's Qualcomm that is infringing not me.

That is incorrect. It is illegal to manufacture, sale, or use a patented invention without permission. By the use of your Wi-Fi, you are infringing and you can be sued by Caltech.

Although they won't go after individual users, they have gone after big corporate users. I remember Starbucks was sued by a Wi-Fi patent holder. (This also applies to copyright, AutoZone got sued for using Linux by SCO, if you remember)

You have a valid case that Apple or Qualcomm should indemnify you of the costs of such a lawsuit, so like insurance, they should represent you in any proceeding against you.

 

[jerryk]

I can understand a for-profit entity going after patent violations, but educational institutions should be donating their work to the world for the greater good, I think. What's the motive behind this? Schools are not in the business of profiting from patents, are they?

Patents are a big part of income for colleges, especially a private college like Cal Tech. They use the money to get and keep great researchers, and also give scholarships to students. This let's them ensure that the price of tuition, $54,000/year undergraduate, is not a barrier for qualified students.

Some schools, for example have programs that ensure a student from a families even with relatively large incomes are not burdened by the big tuition costs. When we looked at it Stanford, they ensured that students from families making less than $150,000/year left after 4 years owning less than $10,000. It think tuition was in the mid $40K/year range at the time.

And public schools also get patent money. The blood thinner Warfarin (sold under the name Coumadin) is named Wisconsin Alumni Research Fund (WARF) for University of Wisconsin where it was was discovered in the 1930s.

Bottom line is a university is a big money business. And our taxes and tuition fees only pay a small amount of the costs of creating facilities, running the place, paying talented staff, and conducting cutting edge research.

 

[falainber]

That is incorrect. It is illegal to manufacture, sale, or use a patented invention without permission. By the use of your Wi-Fi, you are infringing and you can be sued by Caltech.

Although they won't go after individual users, they have gone after big corporate users. I remember Starbucks was sued by a Wi-Fi patent holder. (This also applies to copyright, AutoZone got sued for using Linux by SCO, if you remember)

You have a valid case that Apple or Qualcomm should indemnify you of the costs of such a lawsuit, so like insurance, they should represent you in any proceeding against you.

Also, I do not manufacture and sell anything so I am not making any profits from my infringing (if I do infringe). Unlike Apple, I am OK with paying $1.50 (or whatever it is) to CalTech.

 

[jerryk]

4. Can't argue with the president's house, but there is something to be said for having the president living right on campus. It's part of the pay package. Are college president's overpaid? Probably, just like US corporate executives in general. The argument is that you are competing for talent from some elite pool; you can buy into that story, or not.

When the president of the University makes $400K and the Football coach make $9M (Dabo Swinney - Clemson). I would say the college President is underpaid.
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How stupid that they would go after the technologies of ****** components anyway -- very bad shame when my $400 Pixel 3a gets 600Mbps vs 450Mbps on my XS

I know speeds aren't the only factors in this stuff, but why not just use the Intel chips that come with Macs anyway, incredible

It not just the wifi chips that determine speed. They are at the bottom of stack of hardware and software that are coordinated to get that bit of information for a server to your phone. And everything in this stack can affect wifi performance.

 

[cmaier]

Why would I be infringing by using WiFi? I don't even use Apple devices which infringe I do have a phone with Qualcomm chip but it's Qualcomm that is infringing not me. I paid for this phone, Qualcomm apparently pocketed the fraction of the price intended to pay for the patents instead of transferring it to CalTech. That's their problem. I am all for CalTech earning their share of money for their inventions. Qualcomm and Apple, on the other hand, could do with less profits. They are profiteering off others IP. Hopefully the courts will fix this.

As long as you are using a device where the manufacturer paid for a license, you should be fine.

Of course, there are a hundred lawsuits going on at any given time, against qualcomm and everyone else, alleging infringement by devices that have wifi. So you’re infringing those, instead.

 

[Analog Kid]

Paying employees is not a reason to patent troll.

Paying employees is absolutely a reason to license their work for royalties. Not everyone demanding payment for their invention is a “troll”, any more than a farmer demanding payment for their soybeans is a troll.

One difference between invention and farming is that there is a physical token that changes hands in a soybean transaction while inventions can be stolen from the fields, or simply taken without knowing (may contain soy or soy byproducts). Another difference is that being told you have an invention by the Patent Office doesn't mean you have an invention-- the Patent Office is often overworked, underqualified, and less-than-fully informed so their judgements are subject to review by the courts.

Patent trolling isn't demanding someone pay you for an invention you own (either because you invented it or bought it from the inventor)-- trolling is asserting a dubious patent hoping that the company you're suing would rather pay you than the lawyers it would take to fend you off.

If a court judgement has been made in favor of the patent holder against a company with the ability to mount a strong defense (like Apple), that's a pretty strong argument that the patent is not dubious and thus the claimant is not a troll.

Gotta take the stance here that if you don't create an actual product then your patent is bullsh@t.

Most inventors don't have the capacity to create a product. Knowing enough information theory to optimally code a radio transmission doesn't mean you know how to mold plastic, refine aluminum, manage a supply chain or even write the software necessary to implement your coding algorithm. In most companies, the inventors are in engineering and products are made by operations. Apple doesn't make any hardware products, for example, they ask contract manufacturers to.

Aside from the ambiguity of what it means to “create an actual product”, restricting patents only to inventors under the same corporate umbrella as the manufacturing dramatically limits your pool of available innovators and therefore the rate of innovation. There are maybe 4 companies capable of making smartphones at The scale Apple does— saying you can’t develop technology useful to smartphones if you don’t work for one of those 4 companies is a bad idea...

The patent is the product in this case.

 

[maerz001]

Actually, that is what COPYRIGHT laws are for -- this has nothing to do with patents.

Nothing? Think again. There is plain copyright aka reinstall which would not work on a different hardware anyway.
The patents of ios features what make the experience for customers worth it is what i was having in mind. Just one example: google about the rubber band effect.
without the patents one could reprogramm and copyrights would help a bit

 

[Analog Kid]

You missed my earlier post which explained that commercial patent royalties are considered unrestricted funds and are used to pay for stuff that the government finds unallowable to pay with taxpayer money.

That's the fundamental difference with private schools who sit on big endowments (also unrestricted funds).

In general, with any company or organization accepting taxpayer dollars, money must be obtained and spent for the purposes it is designated for. That is, tuition expenses are paid with tuition dollars, research expenses are paid with research dollars. If the university cannot pay for all tuition expenses, they can't reach into the research pot, they have to up the tuition.

To give an example of how extreme this separation is, where I went to school there were several locations by cafes where they put two differently styled outdoor trash cans next to each other. One trash can was emptied by people from campus foodservice, which is considered an unrestricted, auxiliary organization, and the other trash can was a general campus trash, which can be paid out of restricted taxpayer funds. Technically, it was illegal to throw cafe trash in the campus trash can.

I read the post, and what you're saying is valid, I just don't see the through line between that post and my comments... Or maybe you're misunderstanding my point. Either way, I think we're talking past one another.

 

[jimlux]

Caltech, like other universities and educational institutions and non-profits, owns the patent rights because of the Bayh-Dole Act which was created in 1980 to encourage universities to do biotech and genetic engineering research and to put it into use. Under the terms of that law, intellectual property rights from government funded research at a non-profit remain at the institution, with the government getting a non-exclusive, fully paid, royalty free license. Prior to the Bayh-Dole act, the government held the patents, but didn't actually actively try to find licensees, etc. Since typically, one needs substantial investment to take the patented idea and turn it into a product, lots of good ideas languished on the shelf. The act allows universities to collect royalties, so they go out and market the patents, which then gets entrepreneurs involved, and the business proceeds apace.

Typical royalties (at Caltech) are probably in the single digit percent of sales for small sales volumes,, and I would suspect that for something being done by the million, the royalty percentage would be even less.

This is pretty fair. The IEEE 1394 (aka Firewire) charges something like $0.50/port royalty plus some initial fee. If Caltech is getting 5% of the cost of a $10 chip embedding these particular LDPC codes, then it's comparable.

 

[konqerror]

I read the post, and what you're saying is valid, I just don't see the through line between that post and my comments... Or maybe you're misunderstanding my point. Either way, I think we're talking past one another.

You said:

The points I was making in the part you quoted were that the cost of running the University doesn’t change so if it’s not paid for with royalties it will have to be paid somehow

That is not true. The money that royalties and other unrestricted funds pay for is stuff that the government finds is not an important part of the university's core mission of education and research and is not a responsible use of taxpayer dollars.

As a true example: purchasing beer for Friday afternoon get-togethers or student recruitment events with an open bar. Another true example: swanky dorms for athletes, or as pointed out above, paying a coach $9 Million a year.

If they didn't have this money, they wouldn't have spent it.

 

[jimbobb24]

I can understand a for-profit entity going after patent violations, but educational institutions should be donating their work to the world for the greater good, I think. What's the motive behind this? Schools are not in the business of profiting from patents, are they?

They are in the habit of profiting off patents. Like crazy. You the taxpayer fund them, they make a discovery, patent it, and then academics and administration use the money to give themselves pay raises and fund other projects (occasionally even more research).
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Once again, software patents should only last 3-5 years (with the copyright on the code lasting as long as a normal copyright). All this is insanity using something designed for physical goods isn't working.
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Bottom line is a university is a big money business. And our taxes and tuition fees only pay a small amount of the costs of creating facilities, running the place, paying talented staff, and conducting cutting edge research.

This is is a decent statement in 1980. Now its just not the case...they are flush with money from taxpayers and tuition and acting like any business drunk with money they are certain will never end.

Tricked-Out College Campuses, From Water Parks to Luxury Dorms

With competition for tuition money ramping up, colleges are looking for ways to set themselves apart and some have turned to investing in unimaginable campus experiences, from water parks to luxurious dorm rooms.

abcnews.go.com

 

[jerryk]

This is is a decent statement in 1980. Now its just not the case...they are flush with money from taxpayers and tuition and acting like any business drunk with money they are certain will never end.

The big waste to me seems to me to be sports.

Should the football coach of Celmson get paid $9M when the President of the college gets $400,000? Going to guess they have a great stadium and sports facility also. So much for institute of higher education.