Of course LTD loves the "exit" strategy.
You realize that this won't let Apple of the hook for prior transgressions, right?
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Apple Pushes for Clarification on Licensing of FRAND Patents
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Of course LTD loves the "exit" strategy.
You realize that this won't let Apple of the hook for prior transgressions, right?
It doesn't really matter. Apple will eventually pay, but they're looking for the best deal possible.
So what they pay and what is deemed fair by either party is subjective. I agree. I agree that Apple will pay. I also agree that what is fair is subjective and that ultimately the courts will decide. What they decide may or may not be fair. But that won't stop the "hoopla" on this message board either way. Motorola will either be cursed for being greedy and that ultimately it doesn't matter because it's pennies for Apple - or Apple will be victorious - sticking it to Motorola and (again) it won't matter because it's pennies.
Do I have that right, LTD?
Does not work that way. dropped support for 2G and 3G no carrier would support them and tons of users would be SOL. Apple is required to support both of those techs for quite some time in the future.
Top it off going 4G only does not get Apple way from Motorola. Guess who owns a good chunk of the LTE patents as well (you guess it Motorola) and Motorola will go after a cross licencing agreement to get the ones Apple controls in LTE. The LTE patents Apple gains most of them are going to fall under FRAND rules when it is all said and done.
That's a widespread belief, but it was apparently not as simple as that.
When the companies were getting together to decide on the GSM standard, many of them originally wanted to just pool their patents for free. The larger players naturally did not.
So what ended up happening was that everyone made individual cross-patenting or license deals with each other. The smaller companies agreed to FRAND terms amongst themselves, while the larger ones asked for more money. Motorola stood apart in asking for no money at all... just cross-licensing.
Because of the resulting mess, ETSI was formed to try to force all participants into FRAND licensing. However, government pressure from around the world (especially the USA, who was afraid of Europe making all the rules) made ETSI dropped all the "required" parts, and instead FRAND is now simply a strong request.
(Much of this taken from Mobile Telecommunications Standards - Section 7.4.2 IPR Policies and Practices of Standardization Bodies. available from Amazon )
A company called IDC actually did that (show up with critical TDMA patents later on). A US judge threw them out, but a German judge let some stand, and now that company makes a good living off EU royalties.
It could be considered a bargain if Apple gets away without giving up any patents of their own. And it's less than Qualcomm gets:
Qualcomm currently gets 3.4% of the price of a CDMA or WCDMA phone.
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Shouldn't that be weighted by how big of a pool they are dealing with to use a particular standard? My understanding is that Qualcomm holds a lot of CDMA patents, meaning their share is understandably bigger.
Moving forward, is LTE licensing just as complicated?
Explains pretty clearly why long rumored cell modems in MacBooks hasn't happened.
The only accusation I made was that, unless he had inside information, his statement of fact was merely an assumption, a point you missed. And yes, I did make an assumption as well but stated it as such. That's not hypocrisy.
Furthermore, I never disagreed with him. Apple may very well have dragged their feet, but the question was, how does he know? Again, FOR ALL WE KNOW Apple and Motorola are conspiring to somehow stick it to Google in the end.
But some models of Ipads have cell modems....
Maybe it isn't clear at all - especially when you consider how many other laptops have cell modems, at least as an option.
Back when the Nokia/Apple case was big news I remember reading that half of the LTE patents belong to Nokia.
First of all an Ipad isnt a phone either, and yet they want the same % for it as well, if Apple makes a car I would expect it would be covered under this 2.25% (or more practically) if they put 3G in $1499 TV, I would expect it would be covered under this, and again, why should phones with different memory storage requirements pay different amounts of royalties on 3G patents? Why exactly do you think this is an invention of Florian, isn't apple quoting that number in last years letter to the FRAND folks? It would seem strange for them to quote a number from Florian, instead of the actual number that Motorola asked for from Apple. A pricing based on a percentage of the part of Motorolas that isnt being used due to them using Qualcomm part would seem a much more fair cost alternative then one that changes by the amount of Ram you install or the number of pixels on the screen.
No, in the letter to the ETSI there is no percentage, no name, nothing.
http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2012/02/motorola-wants-225-of-apples-sales-in.html
Here you can see the letter, if you can find where Motorola says a 2.25% of the sale price or where it say it wants the same amount for ALL the products I will be very glad to change my opinion.
Without context this letter means nothing
It's also impractical. You can add a dongle or use a hotspot with no impact on portability or usability in those cases given the already existing size of the computer. They have nothing to gain from it being included.
I don't know. And the fact is the only people that know what it means are the ones involved in that letter.
Florian Mueller doesn't know anything about that so he is making up that to spread FUD, the same thing he always do.
The only thing you can't take with a grain of salt are the documents, and only because he can't change them.
P.S. And looking more carefully at the letter, perhaps even he changes the documents because he has cut part of the letter.
The letter (or the first paragraph of it) is right there on the article you just sent me to, more of the letter is actually on other sites, so I am confused about what you are arguing. It says 2.25%, if you are arguing that Motorola wants 2.25% of build price vs sale price it doesnt really matter. Nothing here says that Motorola didnt want to receive more money for a 64 GB phone vs a 16 GB phone, (or Ipads for that matter). I think the interesting thing in the article you pointed me to too is that the Qualcomm-Motorola license issue may have the 4S phones (and 3G Ipad 2s).
-Tig
Please, can you link where are more parts of the letter? I didn't knew that has been disclosed more parts
And the thing I'm arguing is the claim that Motorola wants 2.25% of the price sale of ALL the products with GPRS tech.
And nothing there says that motorola did want to receive more money for a 64 GB phone vs a 16 GB phone, (or Ipads for that matter)
That's certainly one way.
Motorola has 50% of the GSM base patents and I believe that Qualcomm about 50% of the CDMA base patents, so they sound the same in that respect.
OTOH, those companies no doubt weight each patent by how essential they think it is
Apparently so. I can't even find a consensus on who owns the most valuable ones.
By sheer count, Nokia has the most LTE patents, followed by Ericsson, Qualcomm and Nortel (I don't know if those include the Nortel ones that Apple bought or not. Nortel also sold a bunch before the auction.) Heck, even RIM has some.
Listed by patent value (essentiality), I saw one chart that was overwhelmingly LG and Qualcomm, then continued to lessen with IDC, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, ZTE, Nortel, ETRI, TI, Ericsson, NSN, RIM, Freescale, Huawei and NEC.
Lte
To those people saying that Apple has no vested interest in how FRAND licensing, you should consider that Apple along with the consortium has a significant number of LTE patents from Nortel. If Apple is such a bully, I don't see them throwing lawsuits against manufacturers regarding LTE.
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From AI forums:
seems pretty suspect to me...
To those people saying that Apple has no vested interest in how FRAND licensing, you should consider that Apple along with the consortium has a significant number of LTE patents from Nortel. If Apple is such a bully, I don't see them throwing lawsuits against manufacturers regarding LTE.
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From AI forums:
PowerMach said:
seems pretty suspect to me...
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If I were Apple sending such a letter to a regulator I would attach a check for $10,000,000.00 payable to a special master appointed by the court to pay royalties due. This would establish once and for all they are more than willing to pay reasonable royalties, but are targeted for litigation being the largest pot of cash.
Such a check and letter would not only get their immediate attention, it would make the point with no confusion.
Such a check and letter would not only get their immediate attention, it would make the point with no confusion.
2.5% of $30 dumb phone = $.75
2.5% of $650 iPhone = $16.25
$.75 not equal $16.25 thus not fair. In fact it's not the fact that they are not equal it's the fact that the technology used in both handsets is exactly the same and doesn't cost a penny more to implement. How can Motorola justify charging 21x more to allow Apple to implement a technology on an iPhone versus any other dumb phone?
There are criteria to design patents. You can't just patent a rectangle, although a number of people on here have claimed Apple attempted to do so (I haven't seen the patent, so I don't know how close that is to the truth).
They've tried to avoid paying in the past. Wasn't FRAND offered on this matter in the past as well?
What phone costs $30? Any that I've seen that low are heavily subsidized. I've never seen pay as you go type phones for such a small amount.
Therefore it should be based on the parts costs so the value added of the manufacturer's network or ecosystem is not penalized. Also that is not caused by the patents at issue.
Re: my $10m check suggestion, the target audience for that tactic is regulators who are interested in intent, not plaintiffs who only care about squeezing blood from a rich turnip using lawyers, so mainly only lawyers win.
Rocketman