carnegie
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Apple finally reaches one billion paid subscriptions milestone
That's not what Apple said in both its SEC filing and in its conference call yesterday. Apple says that it passed one billion paid subscriptions, not one billion paid subscribers.applebynature said:Your headline and the first two sentences are FALSE. It's subscribers, not subscriptions. They likely have had several billion subscriptions for quite a while. This new milestone is stating that there are 1 Billion individual people who have at least one subscription of some kind through Apple. It's an important distinction and one that I'm not surprised AI got wrong in the freakin headline itself.
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Epic asks U.S. Supreme Court to enforce lower court's App Store order
Yes, a single Justice can decide an application like this - either granting or denying it.gatorguy said:
I understand that in some circumstances a single Justice can issue a stay, subject to review. Would it also be true that a single Justice can vacate one, or does that require a gang of four?carnegie said:Justice Kagan today requested a response from Apple to Epic's application to vacate the stay and gave Apple until Friday at 5 PM ET to file such response. I suspect, after that response is received, she'll refer the matter to the full Supreme Court to decide.
An application like this - asking, e.g., to vacate a stay - has to first be submitted to the appropriate Justice for a given circuit. For the Ninth Circuit Justice Kagan is the appropriate Justice. If that Justice denies the application, the applicant can file another application with any Justice they want. If they're denied again, they can file with another Justice and so on until all nine Justices have been applied to. To avoid that, by practice, the second Justice receiving an application refers it to the entire Court to decide.
The first Justice receiving an application can also refer it to the entire Court to decide. Sometimes they'll do that and sometimes they'll decide the application themselves.
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Epic asks U.S. Supreme Court to enforce lower court's App Store order
Justice Kagan today requested a response from Apple to Epic's application to vacate the stay and gave Apple until Friday at 5 PM ET to file such response. I suspect, after that response is received, she'll refer the matter to the full Supreme Court to decide. -
Epic asks U.S. Supreme Court to enforce lower court's App Store order
That is not what this application asks for. In this application Epic is asking the Supreme Court to vacate the stay issued by the Ninth Circuit so that the injunction requiring Apple to change its anti-steering policies would go into effect while the Supreme Court considers the matter - i.e., while the Court decides whether to grant the forthcoming cert petition from Apple and then, possibly, hears the case.AppleInsider said:Epic Games is asking the United States Supreme Court to uphold a recent ruling made by a lower court, hoping the highest court will unpause an injunction against Apple and force the company's hand with App Store payment systems.
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While the majority of legal decisions in the Epic Games vs. Apple lawsuit have gone in Apple's direction, there is one that didn't -- anti-steering rules in the digital storefront. Unsurprisingly, Apple petitioned the Supreme Court to review the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' decision.
As a result of that petition, Apple can technically delay any major changes to the App Store. By default, the company now has 90 days before it needs to make any changes, and it could get even longer if SCOTUS decides to hear the case.
Epic Games is not very happy with how this is going, according to a report from Reuters. The company, which develops the popular battle royale game Fortnite, has filed a request with the highest court in the nation to lift the lower court's decision.
SCOTUS has not moved on this particular case as of the time of publication, either granting Apple's appeal or responding to Epic's requests....
Epic no doubt will ask the Court to let stand the ruling in its favor regarding Apple's anti-steering policies , but that ask will come in the form of a response to a cert petition from Apple which has yet to be filed. It would make no sense for Epic to ask the Court to let stand that ruling now; it would be putting the cart before the horse so to speak. Similarly, Apple would not now ask the Supreme Court to let stand all of the aspects of the Ninth Circuit's decision which went in its favor. It would only do that in response to Epic filing a cert petition of its own challenging those aspects of the decision.
As I suggested, Apple has not petitioned the Supreme Court to review the Ninth Circuit's decision. It has 90 days from the date when the Ninth Circuit denied panel and en banc rehearings of the case to file such a cert petition. That happened at the end of June, so Apple has about 2 months left to file a cert petition. So does Epic. Apple will likely take almost all of that time before filing its petition. And so long as Apple files such a petition and provides notice to the Ninth Circuit of that filing, the Ninth Circuit's stay (of the injunction requiring Apple to change its anti-steering policies) will automatically be extended until the Supreme Court decides whether to grant Apple's petition. That could take a few months or it could take much longer. So even if the Court ultimately decides not to hear the case - i.e., not to grant Apple's petition - the Ninth Circuit's stay was, for practical purposes, for longer than 90 days.
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Apple may still be liable for $7 billion in UK 4G iPad & iPhone patent trial
radarthekat said:I fail to see how a verdict that the parents ARE essential fits with an award equivalent to $7 billion. These seem contradictory.
Yes, $7 billion would be an absurd amount for just Optis' patents. But the actual amount, pending appeal, was already determined a couple of months ago and it was around $5 million per year. Apple would get a global license and have to pay around $60 million total which would cover previous years plus interest and 5 years into the future.FileMakerFeller said:
To date, Apple has sold in excess of 1 billion phones around the world; it's unclear if this ruling means a fee is owed for every device sold or only for those sold in the UK where the patents are held. I can't quickly find any reports of sales numbers for 4G and newer phones so let's just stick with 1 billion devices as the ballpark figure.chutzpah said:
Why? Them being essential is what means that Apple has used them and needs to pay licensing fees.radarthekat said:I fail to see how a verdict that the parents ARE essential fits with an award equivalent to $7 billion. These seem contradictory.
If the total damages is 5 billion pounds or US$7B, that means a fee of US$7 per device for the TWO (count 'em!) infringed patents. Maybe there's a penalty in there for wilful infringement, but it still seems high.
I found this report which states that as of 1st Jan 2022 there are ~200k STANDARDS ESSENTIAL PATENTS for the 4G and 5G technology suites, and the number is growing at roughly 25k per annum. If every SEP is worth US$3.50 per device sold, then every 4G/5G-capable wireless chip and software package would sell for US$700k rather than (as a rough estimate) US$60-ish.
This is another example of private interests being incapable of forming a workable technology standard and of patents being a net drain on the world's economy. The theory is that by submitting your patents to the pool you are trading a theoretically possible higher wholesale price for the theoretically increased volume of being part of every component shipped. It is therefore simpler and cheaper for manufacturers to adopt the standard and allow the authoring parties to profit from their work - no muss, no fuss.
But of course, greed is rampant and has been exacerbated by a legal system that faces contradictions in property ownership laws; precedent in many jurisdictions has led to expectations that SEPs are, like any other patents, defensible by the IP owner where the rights have not been fully transferred to the standards body. I think you'd solve a lot of problems if standards bodies were mandated to be the legal owners of all patents submitted to the pool, but no doubt that would introduce other issues that I haven't considered.
I mean, seriously: if the patents are essential to the standard then they should be ratified by the standards body and that should be prima facie evidence. They should also then be covered by the licensing fee that any manufacturer pays to the standards body, end of story.
There have been multiple trials and corresponding appeals in this case; it was broken up into 5 parts. So AI might have missed the judgment (from the so-called Trial E) that determined the FRAND rate and that's why it suggests that a much higher number is still on the table. (For what it's worth, I don't think such a high number was ever really on the table.)
