It seems odd that there is much scope for trade secrets given the level of standardisation and patenting.
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Qualcomm Accuses Apple of Stealing LTE Modem Trade Secrets and Giving Them to Intel [Updated]
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This could take awhile to sort out and the truth is likely somewhere in the middle. A few years ago I worked at company that multi-sourced some key components in a couple of the main product lines. To prevent inadvertent sharing, even the support staff had to be kept apart and separate including things as broad as the knowledge base or as personal as seeking the help of the person in the cube next to you.
What happens is that it becomes quickly known that in certain situations, the part from company a works better than company b. And the reverse can be true too.
So for instance support staff sharing that Qualcomm modems work much better in Waltham MA then the intel and in any way sharing that info with a customer could be construed as IP theft and then it escalates from there.
Those that have the earlier Retina MacBook pros will remember the Samsung vs. LG screen debacle. Customers wanted the Samsung part and Apple as a consequence heeded that in the pro line, but bought a bunch of lg displays for other product lines
What happens is that it becomes quickly known that in certain situations, the part from company a works better than company b. And the reverse can be true too.
So for instance support staff sharing that Qualcomm modems work much better in Waltham MA then the intel and in any way sharing that info with a customer could be construed as IP theft and then it escalates from there.
Those that have the earlier Retina MacBook pros will remember the Samsung vs. LG screen debacle. Customers wanted the Samsung part and Apple as a consequence heeded that in the pro line, but bought a bunch of lg displays for other product lines
WRONG. Like so many people, you don't bother to look beyond the surface, and incorrectly dismiss Gigabit LTE as useless. It's not about getting 500mbps speed tests. It's about getting a usable signal at the extreme edge of a site when an Intel radio or a phone without 4x4 MIMO can't. It's about fighting for bandwidth in extreme congestion, like at a large event. It's about the networks being able to more efficiently deliver data.
The cell company has to deploy 4x4 MIMO first for this to work. At present, 4x4 MIMO is not being deployed on low-band frequencies.
Why would Apple wait till recently if that was the intent. Qualcomm really wants to be a monopoly anyway.
If it is true they definitely should report it, you can’t let big companies or anyone get away with murder because of fear or it will never stop.
Ahh, I see what you did there. Made up something about Apple that isn't true then claimed Qualcomm had some "actual value".
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Notice how you came to the conclusion that Apple actually did this at the end there, before anything ever went to trial.
or it just means Intel's modem engineers not as skilled as Qualcomm's engineers.
What effing difference does it make whether you have an intel modem or not (Qualcomm), your phone will download that website just a fraction of a second faster, youtube does not even make a difference, it will buffer so there's that, the vast majority does not need a faster modem, maybe some people in jobs that transfers huge files, but then again, what can you do with that huge file on an iPhone, a computer..yes, not an iPhone.
I've got the Xs on release day, coming from a 6S, it's a huge difference in speed (CPU and GPU), modem is no issue.
Exactly.
*OT, I prefer Grolsch.
I've got the Xs on release day, coming from a 6S, it's a huge difference in speed (CPU and GPU), modem is no issue.
Exactly.
*OT, I prefer Grolsch.
Reading the court documents is actually quite funny, because it looks like the whole lawsuit is based on a posting on thelayoff.com, a website where people anonymously post layoff information and which is known for a huge amount of BS, often posted by people from other companies to troll the readers. Someone posted there that Apple was engaged in a conspiracy with Intel. Qualcomm took this posting seriously enough to ask Apple to investigate. Apple - not surprisingly - refused. And now, Qualcomm is taking Apple to court over this.
Here is the link to the post referred to in the court documents:
https://www.thelayoff.com/t/O9RS4rC
Once again, thelayoff.com is not some whistleblower site that verifies its information. 98% of the stuff posted on that site is pure unadulterated BS.
Just imagine - you could write here: "Hey, I am a BMW employee. We're paying several engineers at Tesla to provide us with detailed specifications of their new engines." Elon Musk reads this and decides to sue BMW over this, based on a troll posting on macrumors.com. That is exactly the level of stupidity that you see in Qualcomm's lawsuit.
Let this sink in:
Nobody can verify who posted that comment on thelayoff.com.
Nobody can verify if the person in question had any knowledge about the Intel/Apple/Qualcomm relationship.
Nobody can verify if that person might be a legit Intel employee who actually might have misunderstood anything.
Nobody can verify if that person was a troll. Possibly even a Qualcomm employee (the Intel board there is being trolled by Qualcomm guys every single day - heck, on some days, most of the people posting on the Intel board seem to come from Qualcomm).
This is the basis of a lawsuit now.
That person on thelayoff.com claimed that he was instructed by Intel to ignore intellectual property rights. That actually sounds like the person was actually an Intel employee who simply misunderstood clear instructions that were given to them. Because it is indeed common to tell engineers not to worry about intellectual property rights in the sense that engineers should not second-guess themselves every step of the way and start doing patent searches to check if something they just thought of is already covered by a patent. That is left to other people who know exactly what they are doing in that regard. That does not imply that people are told to ignore intellectual property rights to wilfully steal ideas from other companies. So from reading that comment, my guess is that this was indeed an Intel employee, but also a rather dumb Intel employee. So Qualcomm's lawsuit is based on an anonymous comment by a dumb, potentially disgruntled anonymous Intel employee. And that is the best-case scenario, giving the poster there the benefit of the doubt.
Here is the link to the post referred to in the court documents:
https://www.thelayoff.com/t/O9RS4rC
Once again, thelayoff.com is not some whistleblower site that verifies its information. 98% of the stuff posted on that site is pure unadulterated BS.
Just imagine - you could write here: "Hey, I am a BMW employee. We're paying several engineers at Tesla to provide us with detailed specifications of their new engines." Elon Musk reads this and decides to sue BMW over this, based on a troll posting on macrumors.com. That is exactly the level of stupidity that you see in Qualcomm's lawsuit.
Let this sink in:
Nobody can verify who posted that comment on thelayoff.com.
Nobody can verify if the person in question had any knowledge about the Intel/Apple/Qualcomm relationship.
Nobody can verify if that person might be a legit Intel employee who actually might have misunderstood anything.
Nobody can verify if that person was a troll. Possibly even a Qualcomm employee (the Intel board there is being trolled by Qualcomm guys every single day - heck, on some days, most of the people posting on the Intel board seem to come from Qualcomm).
This is the basis of a lawsuit now.
That person on thelayoff.com claimed that he was instructed by Intel to ignore intellectual property rights. That actually sounds like the person was actually an Intel employee who simply misunderstood clear instructions that were given to them. Because it is indeed common to tell engineers not to worry about intellectual property rights in the sense that engineers should not second-guess themselves every step of the way and start doing patent searches to check if something they just thought of is already covered by a patent. That is left to other people who know exactly what they are doing in that regard. That does not imply that people are told to ignore intellectual property rights to wilfully steal ideas from other companies. So from reading that comment, my guess is that this was indeed an Intel employee, but also a rather dumb Intel employee. So Qualcomm's lawsuit is based on an anonymous comment by a dumb, potentially disgruntled anonymous Intel employee. And that is the best-case scenario, giving the poster there the benefit of the doubt.
Qualcomm has a real problem with patent exhaustion and its business model. This is clearly just an attempt to try and convince Apple it has something at stake so they’ll be more willing to negotiate.
Honestly, I really don’t care. I just know Qualcomm has it out for Apple and has gotten nowhere a lot. Qualcomm’s credibility is low in my view. I’m not arguing anything, other than I think Apple didn’t do it and I’m basing it on Qualcomm’s petty attitude towards apple so far.
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I’m running 12.1 now. It fixed initially issues for me.
So you just keep your mouth shut and move on? Yeah thats a great thought process you have.
Given Apple's history, I'm inclined to believe Qualcomm's story.
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You seem to forget that this has happened many times before with Apple with the University of Wisconsin, SONY, Ericsson and many others.
Apple has either lost all of their cases with these entities or settled the cases outside of court.
It's common knowledge that Apple steals technology from other organizations and only pays up after it loses a case or settles if a case seems unwinnable. Foss did a study and noted that Apple has lost and paid far more for patent licensing court cases than any other company. It's unbelievable how much Apple is stealing.
To Apple, ripping-off other companies is cheaper than licensing up front and it's a tragedy that Apple gets away with it. Their practices damage the industry and haly progress. They should be required to pay 10X the damages to discourage other companies from behaving as unethically as Apple.
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You seem to forget that this has happened many times before with Apple with the University of Wisconsin, SONY, Ericsson and many others.
Apple has either lost all of their cases with these entities or settled the cases outside of court.
It's common knowledge that Apple steals technology from other organizations and only pays up after it loses a case or settles if a case seems unwinnable. Foss did a study and noted that Apple has lost and paid far more for patent licensing court cases than any other company. It's unbelievable how much Apple is stealing.
To Apple, ripping-off other companies is cheaper than licensing up front and it's a tragedy that Apple gets away with it. Their practices damage the industry and haly progress. They should be required to pay 10X the damages to discourage other companies from behaving as unethically as Apple.
if intel did indeed use qualcomm's source code, why is the XS having issue then? intel's chips is still **** and they are kind of a suspect company anyway with all the news about backdoor recently.
This has happened a lot in the past. I'm not blaming Apple, but the reason why Apple keeps stealing IPs is because the courts refuse to punish them properly.
Think about it from Apple's perspective?
Why license at the start when they can just steal and possibly get away with it?
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Modems are extremely complicated to make.
Intel and Apple might have only stolen parts of Qualcomm's technology.
This post from the Register gives some background.
"Qualcomm claims it has reason to believe Apple flouted its rules, and cites an incident in which an Apple engineer CC'ed an Intel engineer in a message containing confidential material."
And yes, Qualcomm has the email in question.
The accusation does not seem to be frivolous.
"Qualcomm claims it has reason to believe Apple flouted its rules, and cites an incident in which an Apple engineer CC'ed an Intel engineer in a message containing confidential material."
And yes, Qualcomm has the email in question.
The accusation does not seem to be frivolous.
Apple “keeps stealing IPs?” That’s utter rubbish.
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Nope. Read Qualcomm’s actual amended complaint. There’s nothing in there about such an email.
Oh god. Oh ok. Gee it’s not possible that there’s TONS more drag on all the cellular networks due strictly to the huge explosive growth of content consumption. Fricking everything is nearly wireless.
Take LA for example - MILLIONS of people travel in their cars - their cars are moving between tower after tower and everyone wants more and more access for mobility. Not to mention Apple Watches Etc.
Nobody - not you, not me, not these cell carriers, nor these tech companies can approximate just how much bandwidth will this new mobile world require.
AT&T suddenly has had a resurgence of DEAD ZONES around Los Angeles - and I can state that it ain’t device centric.
Brilliant analysis.
The 4G LTE FRAND Patents lawsuit between Apple and Samsung has proven that Apple does not negotiate in good faith. The courts found Apple guilty of blatant IP theft and recommended that the US ban all imports of iPhones.
While Obama reversed this decision (Due to economic reasons and not legal reasons), it still does not change the fact that Apple was guilty of stealing Samsung's technology and that this lawsuit exposed how Apple operates.
Apple steals IPs first and then possibly pays royalties later. It's a very unethical move on Apple's part.
You do realize that patent infringement is not theft of IP, don’t you?
Maybe you don’t.
Go to law school and when you’re done come back and we can continue this conversation.
So Intel modems are now just as good as Qualcomm’s. Otherwise they wouldn’t be suing.