Patent disputes in front of a jury... I can't imagine a jury has a more nuanced understanding of the technologies involved than these forums do, and given the quality of discussion on patent cases around here I'd choose arbitration by roshambo.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Jury Rules in Favor of Qualcomm, Says Apple Infringed on Three Qualcomm Patents [Updated]
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Yeah. Apple won a judgement for 1 billion in one case. In the this other ruling, Qualcomm won a pitiful 31 million (which is pocket change for Apple). Plus add the fact that the Apple-Qualcomm dispute has costed Qualcomm additional billions of revenue losing Apple as a customer.
So net result: Ruling forces Apple to pay 31 million. Ruling forces Qualcomm to pay 1 billion, plus loses billions more in revenue.
I think you're confusing more words with details. There are no relevant facts in what you quoted, only generalities. You can't patent "quickly connecting to the internet", but you can quickly connect to the internet in nearly infinite ways. The questions are which way does Qualcomm believe they invented, do they actually deserve credit for the invention, and did Apple use the same method without license.
The only way to understand what is at stake in a patent trial is to read the patent and really understand the history of a technology and the interpretation of patent law. Anything like "detail" on a site like this isn't going to inform the discussion-- it's just going to give people the false sense that they understand the argument. The average reader of a site like MR thinks invention is a lightning strike event that changes the very course of history when it is most often a minor technical difference from a generation before.
If you find the patent you're going to discover that "quickly connecting to the internet" is really more about some subtle difference in modulation scheme, or a different way of stuffing bits into a beacon message.
And even that isn't really of much use when these things go to trial. They're jury trials, not engineering tribunals. This is the level of argument being made:
The slide, titled "Patents, go get 'em," has a picture on it of cash bills fanned out. A bullet point under the title says "poker chips," and notes employees get $1,500 for filing a patent, and another $1,500 for the patent being issued.
After clicking at least 10 links deep I still can't find the actual patents being asserted, but I'm pretty sure the claim being disputed has nothing to do with poker chips.
In the end, there's no reason to report to a general audience on patent cases like this at all-- there's nothing here for most people to understand other than mommy and daddy are yelling again.
Last edited:
No, Apple didn’t win a judgment for 1 billion. Qualcomm lost a judgment for 1 billion. They asked the judge to rule that Apple owed the money as a matter of law, and lost. Now it goes to the jury, who will decide if the facts are such that Qualcomm deserves the money.
[doublepost=1552700548][/doublepost]
Generally in patent trials the jury is presented with a great deal of technical evidence, explained by expert witnesses.
Property - Something tangible or intangible to which its owner has legal title
Intellectual - Of or relating to the intellect.
The property is not in the ether.
I think you open your mind to the scope of this and you may see how import it is that we have it.
A last example from me: if I write a song (which i do), my intellectual rights to that song are the only thing stopping say a major label re-recording that song with a boy band and making bank while taking it on tour. The re-recording of it means that the tangible, physical, product of my efforts is no longer being used (The mp3) but it’s still my song and lyrics. If intellectual property laws didn’t exist then my song gets stolen.
Indeed, but we also need to be able to put food on the table and afford the tools needed to create.
Last edited:
Intangible? What dictionary are you citing? Property is something that you can physically hold onto. It possesses the special quality that it's something that can be physically taken away from you. I don't disagree with the concept of property rights. I disagree with the notion that anything "intellectual" falls under the category of "property." Oh, and I can add a new definition to UrbanDictionary.com in the next few minutes. It doesn't make it true.
Do you think you have a basic human right to that? Just because you made a nice melody? I'm a software developer, an artist, and a musician. Don't presume that I'm someone who "doesn't get" the perspective of creative people. You have bought into the "hoodwinking" that I talked about earlier. You think that IP law protects "the little guy" so you discard rational thought and defend IP law because you worry that the lack of IP rights would harm you. IP laws don't help "the little guy", they help those who have already been holding on to copyrights and patents for quite a while and are profiting richly off of them.
Way before patent law was thought up, people like Leonardo da Vinci put forth amazing effort to see their ideas proven out, despite the fact that anyone else could take their ideas and recreate and/or improve upon them without compensating anyone for it. In fact, there was once a time where it was taken for granted that ideas were not "owned property" and anyone could (and should) build upon the ideas that someone before them had helped build.
As a musician, you live in a time where the last thing you should worry about is the lack of state-based protection for some big company stealing your music track. You can have a YouTube channel, with historical evidence of the songs you've made and when they were made. A large company wouldn't blatantly take as their own a sophisticated song you created. On the flipside, if all you have is a "melody" that any number of people could have come up with on their own, then don't expect anyone to go out of their way to see if someone, somewhere came up with that melody sometime before them.
That's exactly the problem...
If you're suggesting that technical evidence is explained to a typical panel of jurors in a way they can actually digest, debate the merits of, and draw suitable conclusions from, I have to say I disagree.
If you mean the jury is read inscrutable text that is converted before their eyes into car and sports metaphors by "technical experts" hired by each side to add theater to the event, then we're not far apart. "If you don't believe us, just ask this man with an actual college degree that we hired." Expert witnesses aren't brought in by the court as arbiters, and they aren't brought in for their expertise in explaining arcane technical details to laypeople. There's no reason to expect them to know more than the engineers in either of the warring companies. They give the illusion of impartiality even though they are de-facto employees. We'd hope they have enough integrity to answer cross-examination questions accurately but we'd hope the same of the companies themselves and in the end there is little authority to overrule them-- they are, after all, experts.
Maybe I'm overly jaded here-- no, I know I'm overly jaded-- but both the patent system and the court system are creaking under the strains they're facing and I find it hard to imagine that a panel of mere mortals is going to bring illumination to a battle among titans like this. Just as I find it hard to imagine that the only thing keeping this from being a well reasoned debate in these forums is that MR isn't giving enough detail.
Case in point:
Oh no, a defender of Apple!Oh wait, he/she/them/they/it/alien is from Cali....
So, despite your history of giving full and well supported responses and, if I remember correctly, linking to patents of your own in the past, this particular poster thinks the best way to discredit your opinion is to build tribal resentment to your current state of residence and what appears to be a dogwhistle about fluid gender identity.
I’ve actually explained patents to judges and prepared experts to explain patents to juries. There is an art to it, but in my estimation the juries tend to get it. They are indeed chosen for their ability to explain arcane technical details to laypeople. That’s exactly what we look for. And when they are merely hired guns who will say anything to get their paycheck, juries aren’t fooled. Good ones will concede points that don’t work in their favor and admit what they don’t know. It’s the job of the expert to tell the truth and the lawyer to explain why that truth means their side wins. The experts get paid whether their side wins or loses.
I copy pasted directly from the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Its the first thing that pops up when you search DuckDuckGo for "Property Definition"
I am the little guy who makes a few thousand every year from the use of my intellectual property. The lack of IP rights would definitely harm me.
Hold on there, you say you are a musician? Have you ever received a royalty check from your intellectual property being used? Its a musicians retirement fund. Any musician you ask who knows anything about royalties and intellectual property will be 99.9% of the time in favor of it. You are idealistic, sure, thats cool, but with your lack of grasp on the particulars of this, your claim to expertise due to you being a musician doesn't hold much weight.
They do. Its been done to me even. Most often its more of the case of a company 'temping' a film or commercial with a piece of music from someone else, and commissioning other musicians to knock it off, changing it just enough to not get in legal trouble. They are already pushing up against the boundary of copyright law, take that away and it is no holds barred.
There is more to music than a melody. Legal battles of music copyright generally focus on the accused's 'intent' to copy someone else or use their ideas without compensating them. Naively making the same melody as someone else, everyone does this all the time by accident, water under the bridge.
Seems. if you can keep saying "accident' as well, you can keep doing it forever... How exactly is this learning a lesson on on the masses? because its not. One company will lean by it, someone else won't know any better.
Instead of "looking" at the 1st battle and say, "ok, well we better not attempt THAT what they tried to do"
Plus, it their fault for not knowing ahead of time... People use the same techniques because they don't wanna "see" if it will infringe from the patent office ahead of time. They'd rather "just hope for the best" and dive right into the deep.
Not a big problem for Apple, a little bird told me something about who is going to pay the lack of incomes. I even may give some ideas to Tim Apple, in addition of the typical 100~200$ raise of price tag for every new iPhone generation, Why don't you, Tim, even sell them with nothing in the box, not even the power adapter or the Earpods?
Whose the crybaby Samsung? They had the verdict against them for $1B.
[doublepost=1552742760][/doublepost]
As was noted Apple didn’t steal. That’s “willful” infringement.
Rather be on the side of 31mm as it validates future payments. That 1b was a refund on excess royalties accrued. The 31mm validates those royalties.
No it does not. The 31million was for non-FRAND/non standards essential patents and had nothing to do with the royalties. Nor does apple dispute that there exist FRAND patents that will require royalty payments, so the existence of infringed patents is irrelevant.
As someone who works in intellectual property for a living - if this is how you feel as a software developer, would you mind being a doll and sending over your code that you spent so much time developing so that I can sell it and profit for myself? (Since you don't really own the idea you know). Thanks!
If everyone had your logic we'd all just be waiting around on someone else's idea instead of making our own.
I didn't say you needed to give away everything you create for free. It's on you to figure out how to profit off of your creative energy. As a software developer, I can keep my code compiled/private, and if I've generated something unique/special, I can profit from being first to market. Then, if I want to continue to profit while others attempt to copy my ideas, I need to continue to work to keep my product better than the competition's in some way or another.
Again, that's the same argument someone else gave. It's simply not true. People are driven to create for a variety of reasons. I'm pretty sure that IP laws didn't exist back when Leonardo da Vinci was creating things, and it didn't stop him.