Qualcomm is so outraged they asked the ITC to block iPhones that DIDN’T use their modems. Okaaay...
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U.S. International Trade Commission Declines to Block iPhone Imports in Ongoing Apple v. Qualcomm Case
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That’s what the “so?” means. What’s your point?
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Worse still, Qualcomm sells chips. When you buy the chip you are entitled to use it as you want without being sued by Qualcomm for infringing their patents for using it. This is a principal of patent law called “patent exhaustion.” Once you sell me the infringing item you can’t sue me for using it. But Qualcomm demands a patent license fee in addition to the price for the chips it sells. It’s theory is that it has one subsidiary sell the chip and a different one owns the patents.
And the same apple that avoided taxes ? Throttled users phones.... come on , let’s not only pick on one side for questionable ethics, i have no love for Qualcomm, but damn the intel modem sucks in recent iPhone.
Let’s open both eyes
Qualcomm and Apple will eventually settle, it's the most likely outcome. But time is not on Qualcomm's side. With every passing month, they are a weakening and dwindling company, a shell of their former golden days. Apple, Intel, and numerous other competitors are already making inroads into Qualcomm's former turf/marketshare.
So go ahead and make your own stuff without their blessing. They aren’t suing anyone for making uncertified cables.
apples complaining that qualcomm is charging higher royalty fees and yet they do it too. really? i smell apple sheep.
That’s not what apple is complaining about. Educate yourself.
And when you get mifi certified it means apple has tested your product and stands behind it. The consumer can trust that it will work properly. You want apple to do that for free?
Seems unlikely Apple would ever agree to a deal where they pay a royalty to a parts supplier based on the price of the finished product, not the part, BUT apparently they have for nearly 10 years. Common sense dictates that that deal should be squashed.
I'm more concerned that Apple has been found to have infringed, which doesn't look good. Not so much for Apple paying a bill, but because it flies in the face of common sense, so the process has lost touch with reality, as legal things do from time to time.
More deeply disturbing is that Apple seems to have become 'too big to fail'… and NO good can come from that.
It's already jacking up prices into the stratosphere, chasing profits to appease the stock market.
Internal process have gone from the 'whatever it takes co-operative culture' to 'just do what you're told, we know better'.
iOS is a dog's breakfast of UI (and I use this term reluctantly) …design… and that keeps finding its way over to macOS.
This is not Job's Apple and I'm the last person to trot that one out, but needs must when the devil vomits into your kettle.
Apple is heading for that iceberg and Cook just keeps putting on more speed. It's a rudderless ship now (shades of Gil Amelio) and while Ive is good in the kitchen, he's no navigator. Prudence would dictate an apple developer would serve a few year's apprenticeship in the discipline of macOS HIG to absorb some company culture and then earn the right to work on the money project, but that's gone out the door in the haste to drive iPhone ahead of (common sense, apparently).
Apple's company culture is less 'humble genius' and more 'too big to fail'. And… no good can come from this.
No. I want them to charge for chips. But they are not, by law, allowed to charge people who already bought their chips a patent license fee for the privilege of using them.
"Qualcomm had asked the ITC to ban imports of the AT&T and T-Mobile iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus, iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, and iPhone X models that use chips from Intel, citing multiple patent violations."
Qualcomm just wants to favor "unless its own chips in use" tatic..
Many companies do the same to swing it in their favor....
Qualcomm just wants to favor "unless its own chips in use" tatic..
Many companies do the same to swing it in their favor....
That is precisely what Apple has been complaining about for over a full decade now -- namely, the royalty basis (ie, end-user device) and high royalty rates. Apple made the same claims against pretty much all wireless IP holders (eg, FRAND violation) whenever they were up for contract renewal, but lost or settled every single lawsuit. Sure, Apple's accusation of double-dipping is unique to Qualcomm's case and that's just a mere subplot in the grand scheme of things.
You can characterize it as a “mere sub plot,” but the majority of the price that Apple doesn’t want to pay is by far the patent license fee. In other words, almost all of the price of using Qualcomm chips is the license cost, not the chip cost. And Apple correctly argues that when they buy Qualcomm chips it is not proper to have to pay a license fee on top of that.
And you say Apple “lost or settled every lawsuit” but it’s just as correct to say that they “won or settled every lawsuit.”
Yeah, I have no idea who is in the right on this one... but I kind of wish Apple would get all their iPhone sales blocked for a while so they could take a break to get their priorities straight again. They are currently so enamored with the success of the big slice of the pie-chart, they've lost their way on most everything else.
Yes, they have refused the fair fe.
They agreed to the licensing terms that are approved.
Now they don't like the fee structure.
Qualcomm fee structure is as follows:
2.75% of wholesale for a single mode handset
3.25% of wholesale for a multi mode handset
3% for complete patent portfolio for single mode
4% for complete patent portfolio for multi mode
The cap is at $500 for the wholesale price of the phone. So if the Xs is more then $500 wholesale the price doesn't go up. $16.25 is the max.
These are the same rates for 4G.
Samsung and everyone else pays these rates. Apple is not special.
See EETImes from a year ago : https://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1332657
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But they infringe on their patents.
There is a precedent for banning.
Seems like blocking iPhones are not in the cards. If you are currently not happy with Apple then you might be in for a long period of not being happy.
Are you sure this is the reason why Qualcomm only asked for the ban of iPhones using Intel chips ?
I see another reason in the doctrine of IP rights exhaustion (see this article on the World Intellectuel Property Organization for more detail). As Qualcomm has sold chips to Apple it is reasonable to think that Qualcomm's IP rights are exhausted for these chips and the products that include them.
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The problem with this argument is that it implies no semi-conductor makers could ever sue a smartphone maker as their chips are all "tiny fractions" of the final product.
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In other words, Qualcomm won its case, but the judge recommended that Apple's sentence be commuted because half the country uses iPhones.
Qualcomm is too. Most people here don't seem to recall back in 2007 when the ITC found that Qualcomm modems infringed on Broadcom patents. A ban was put on Qualcomm imports, which basically meant that Verizon was crippled because they could not get any more CDMA phones.
Verizon even went to the President to stop the ban (same as Apple did years later), but unlike Apple they were denied. Verizon ended up paying $6 royalty per phone directly to Broadcom on their own, just to get phones. And that was just for three patents... not the hundreds Qualcomm licenses.
Exaggerate much? More like $10 per phone. Remember, Apple has no license with Qualcomm. Instead they used to let their Chinese factories pay royalties using their licenses based only on the factory price, originally about $240. Jobs gladly paid 3.25% of that low price, plus he got billions in rebates.
You're thinking of regular courts. The ITC can only ban imports.
That's actually the usual method of licensing cellular patents, and is also not uncommon for other IP. Even Apple uses that method for some of their own IP.
This is not about the pricing method being right or wrong, as much as it is about Tim Cook feeling pressure to get ever increasing profits.
That sentence about "technologies" is just Apple's clever PR way of pretending like the method of charging by percentage of product price is somehow wrong. It's not. Even Apple uses it.
Apple understandably wants to pay as little as they can get away with, so that they can get maximum profits. (It sure as heck isn't so they can drop their consumer prices! lol)
The irony is that many people support the idea of Apple's max profits, yet when other companies wish to maximize their own profits, those companies are somehow evil.
Yes, exaggeration ... even much. Read my two sentence post again - or should I have finished with a /s?