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ITC Agrees to Investigate Apple's Patent Claims Against Motorola
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The market cap of MOT is $18.6B.
Also notably the market cap of ALU Alcatel-Lucent is only $6.6B.
Rocketman
Also notably the market cap of ALU Alcatel-Lucent is only $6.6B.
Rocketman
If Motorola needs help Google will be close by its side. It is one of their leading Android handset producers and a ruling against Motorola could also set a dangerous precedent for all other Android handset builders. Don't just assume because Apple is much larger it can play playground bully and win because it has money.
Basically I'd just like this whole thing come down to letting Apple and Google battle it out. Keep all the little guys out of it. Winner takes all. That would make for some interesting news stories!
The common slang phrase "iTouch" was only used in a press release, not in the complaint itself.
The complaint was about "certain wireless communication devices, portable music and data processing devices, computers and components thereof" made by Apple.
Section 337 of the Tariff Act is about preventing foreign companies from competing unfairly with sales in the USA. It was amended in 1974 and 1988
The most important part is that the changes "specifically apply Section 337 to the importation or sale of products produced abroad by a process covered by a United States patent. "
Which is why almost all Section 337 trade complaints for the past few decades have been over patents.
Bear in mind also that by taking on complaints like this one, the ITC is constantly improving its own powerbase. It has become an entity that can decide on patents with apparently no judicial recourse.
Could you please post some links to those legal loss's, I would love to look them up, Seems I missed them, I stay current with Groklaw but I admit i am not sure what loss's Apple took to hurt them, Could you be kind enough to post some links to what you meant by your post?
Thanks Ahead of Time.
Patents are anticompetitive by definition. Let's take the common-sense approach and only award them in limited rare cases of genuine innovation after significant development by individuals in need of legal protection (ie. small companies) for as little time as possible. Companies like Apple (and yes, all of their huge competitors) have no business holding patents at all.
Why do so many free-market capitalists support government-sponsored monopolies? It makes no sense to me.
Why do so many free-market capitalists support government-sponsored monopolies? It makes no sense to me.
No they aren't. What are you talking about? If there were no patents, my invention or innovation could easily be stolen by a larger company. Talk about 'anti-competitive'.
Perhaps the patent system needs to introduce stricter regulation or a better set of standards, but by no means would removing it help anyone but the companies.
Jobs made the claim of hundreds of patents, although it was pretty clear to us engineers that he must've included every patent on every chip used in the iPhone that was made by anybody. Just the usual salesman hyperbole.
The iPhone looked like a lot of devices that came before it, too. Swipe to unlock, inertial scrolling, pinch zoom, double-tap webpage zoom, large buttons, etc, all were known features in previously publicized projects. (Most consumers had never seen those things, however, which is why they were so impressed. )
The only slightly novel UI patents Apple got recently, were about rubber-banding at the end of screens, and for vertical scroll locking. Since a lot of OS's do those things, Apple is using those two patents constantly in their complaints.
I don't know if Apple has actually lost any iPhone-related patents (yet), but they've certainly lost cases brought against them over visual voice mail, and likely will lose soon over some browser and camera related items. But then, almost every phone maker got nailed on all those.
You might be thinking of the recent ITC staff memo saying that they didn't believe that some of Apple's patent claims were infringed by Nokia, and possibly weren't even valid patents.
To recap the Apple v. HTC / Nokia / Motorola claims:
- Apple used 5 of the same patents against both HTC and Nokia, so ITC removed the five common ones from the original Apple v Nokia claim, and lumped Nokia+HTC together against Apple on those.
- Apple used 5 other patents against HTC.
- Apple used 4 other patents against Nokia. Those were the ones which the ITC staff said were not infringing and probably not valid.
- Three of those four were also used by Apple against Motorola. So that case is also weakened a bit.
The ITC complaints are only meant to try halting import (leverage). The real patent trials for royalties and damages filed in Delaware and Wisconsin have partly been put on hold pending the ITC decisions. Thus the fairly quick ITC decisions will have influence over what juries decide over the next few years.
E.g. let's say the ITC throws out Apple's claims against Nokia. The jury in Delaware is then likely to side with Nokia's claims against Apple, and award Nokia not only the billion dollars in lost GSM royalties, but perhaps give Nokia triple that for damages.
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Don't be so confident as to Google's love for Motorola. The real flowers are sent to HTC, and Samsung.
It's been Apple vs Google since Day 1? Motorola, HTC, and Samsung are "Little Guys"?
Don't underestimate the ability of Microsoft to work with Apple against Google either. There are reasons beyond cosmetic for the vastly different Win7 interface.
Don't be so confident as to Google's love for Motorola. The real flowers are sent to HTC, and Samsung.
It's been Apple vs Google since Day 1? Motorola, HTC, and Samsung are "Little Guys"?
Don't underestimate the ability of Microsoft to work with Apple against Google either. There are reasons beyond cosmetic for the vastly different Win7 interface.
Google cares a lot about what happens with Motorola because if Apple is successful in their lawsuit against Motorola guess where they go knocking next? Then after a legal precedent has been set it makes it even harder for HTC and Samsung if Apple decides to sue them.
Microsoft and Apple becoming best friends against Google? I'll believe it when I see it. Apple retains some working relationship with Microsoft because Office is an important program for the Mac. Other then that... They could care less about each other and are fierce competitors.
In the end what will probably happen is that Motorola will be forced to pay Apple for certain patents and Apple will be forced to pay Motorola for certain patents and in the end it will be a net gain of 0. That is if any patent violations are actually found. The only ones making money will be the lawyers and law firms.
Sure, Visual Voice mail ( @kdarling , yes, I was thinking of VVM).
Apple's Visual Voice mail patent in question
http://www.pcworld.com/article/143668/iphone_visual_voicemail_patent_in_question.html
Apple settle, and license:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-9969909-37.html
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In the meantime, Google rips off everyone and gives it away for free.
(And by "free" of course I mean "ad supported.")
None of the Android source is in any way "ad supported". What are you on about?
Sure it is, or at least has the capacity to be. For example, search. What is the default search engine on Android? Google. People use google to do web searches on their Android, people click an ad supported link, Goole makes money with the ad tie-in.
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.2.1; en-gb; Nexus One Build/FRG83) AppleWebKit/533.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/533.1)
Laguna is suggesting that Android is given away free because it is "ad supported". If this means that someone might go online, might search with Google and might click on a Google ad this still doesn't equate to an ad supported OS in my eyes. You can compile and use Android without using Google services.
Of course the more people online searching Google will help but it doesn't need to be through Android for it to help. WP7, symbian, iOS or even Bada users that use Google all help the company in that respect.
If Laguna was directinng his snipe at the Google apps/services (Gmail, Maps, Android Market e.t.c) none of them are a part of Android OS and are licenced separately, thus they are not given away for free.
The only smartphone OS I know of which has advertising components built into the core is iOS with its iAds stuff.
Full of Win said:
Laguna is suggesting that Android is given away free because it is "ad supported". If this means that someone might go online, might search with Google and might click on a Google ad this still doesn't equate to an ad supported OS in my eyes. You can compile and use Android without using Google services.
Of course the more people online searching Google will help but it doesn't need to be through Android for it to help. WP7, symbian, iOS or even Bada users that use Google all help the company in that respect.
If Laguna was directinng his snipe at the Google apps/services (Gmail, Maps, Android Market e.t.c) none of them are a part of Android OS and are licenced separately, thus they are not given away for free.
The only smartphone OS I know of which has advertising components built into the core is iOS with its iAds stuff.
Highly unlike though, given that Apple is alleging that Nokia was not abiding by the RAND licensing terms it is required to apply for their patented tech being included in the GSM standard.
Well Google's only significant incoming revenue stream is from ads, so technically everything from Google is ad-supported.
This is why mommy and daddy paid for law school ... so that their child could pay for their nursing home stay.
The only thing worse than a slip and fall lawyer is a patent one.
1: You should not be able to patent fundamental things, or thing that become the norm.
Eg. The Wheel, a Touch Screen, a Keyboard, pressing an icon to make something happen.
That's in no persons interest.
2: You should not be able to patent just an idea which you either cannot or don't actually make.
Again, it's not in the consumers (we are all consumers) that one company cannot make something as some other company "x" years ago patented the idea though they could not make it, did not make it and had no idea how to make it.
It's stupid patent law.
If you make something then by all means protect it.
But you can't have someone (say Apple) go, I propose the idea of a 3D hologram floating above the screens surface, and will patent that.
If they can't make it, and don't know how to. And then get the lawyers out when in 2 years time Blackberry launch a similar thing.
Eg. The Wheel, a Touch Screen, a Keyboard, pressing an icon to make something happen.
That's in no persons interest.
2: You should not be able to patent just an idea which you either cannot or don't actually make.
Again, it's not in the consumers (we are all consumers) that one company cannot make something as some other company "x" years ago patented the idea though they could not make it, did not make it and had no idea how to make it.
It's stupid patent law.
If you make something then by all means protect it.
But you can't have someone (say Apple) go, I propose the idea of a 3D hologram floating above the screens surface, and will patent that.
If they can't make it, and don't know how to. And then get the lawyers out when in 2 years time Blackberry launch a similar thing.