Please use some common sense. A 3G phone will probably have 50-60 FRAND encumbered patents. If 2.5-3.5% per patent was reasonable, then someone like Apple (who does not own any offsetting FRAND patents) could be paying as much as 200% of the selling price just in royalties. Clearly, that's absurd..
Try 20-30 THOUSAND FRAND patents per device and you'd be closer to the mark.
What did anybody expect from Google? They have made money by using content from others to benefit their search. To top it all, the owners of Google benefited from SJ guidance when they started the company. A certain snake in the grass did a Trojan Horse on Apple, regarding the iPhone. Guess who it was?!
2.25% of the price of a chip is how most companies pay the fee when using the chip in a finished product, Motorola is revoking the license of chipmakers when the sell their chips to selected companies and demanding the same fee on completed products, which is unfair and discriminatory.
Are you certain you haven't confused Motorola with Samsung?
When you use terms like good and evil you sounds emotional which means you aren't being objective.
As for their slogan, it's a slogan, not a philosophy, manifesto or a way or doing business. Apple had a Think Different campaign yet during the Q&A session of WWDC in 1997 Jobs basically said that he has no problem with not thinking different. It's about thinking better. Do you really think Apple is "green" because it's good for the environment or because it's good for their bottom line? For profit companies aren't hear to set your morale compass, you set that yourself when you choose to buy or not buy a product.
Though we disagree often your, posts are always a pleasure to read...well thought out and pretty neutral when it comes to perspective.
The article seems to be equating Motorola Mobility's allegedly outrageous behaviour with its H.264 patents demanding a 2.25% royalty, and then suggesting that a royalty rate of 2.25% for a 3G patent is equally outrageous. Without more information about the patents in these areas it is difficult to evaluate this argument.
I've been trying to track this issue for some time. Basically, this guy Mueller sources about 110% of all the real information; if he doesn't report it, it goes unsaid. FossPatents.BlogSpot.Com. Read his conflict statement and be as careful as he is about separating fact & opinion ? you sound like the type who'll be able to do so, but this is a huge, complex area and it may not be easy.
On to your concerns that this sounds like people have their hair on fire: there were something like 1200 patents that went into the various pieces of the GSM standard; if you don't implement all, you don't have a GSM capable device. If each one is worth 2.25% of your product, you would have to pay about $18,000 on a $600 phone. See a possible case that 2.25% each might not be reasonable? Obviously, nobody is paying that. And the claim that the IP Moto gets from other GSM Musketeers (?all for one & one for all?) makes it fair still can't hold water. This is simply an attempt to lock Apple out of GSM telephones in Europe. Period.
The MPEG-LA deal is even stranger. You can go to their website and see their claim that THEY license AVC/h.264 as a pool. So why is Moto, which put its patents into the pool, trying to separately sue Microsoft over Windows 7, IE9, WMP and Xbox, when Microsoft is already a licensor of the patents? And why at a rate that is many times as much as MPEG-LA's claimed rate? Supposedly, when these firms all agreed to put their patents into a pool, they agreed to a split on the (very modest) licensing revenues, and a company that wants to implement it can sign one deal, not worrying about one individual such as Moto holding them up. I never saw a formal count of the h.264 patents, but scanning thru the list, with possible overlaps due to multiple countries, I'd guess 3,000 of 'em. Who is going to implement h.264 if they have to negotiate a separate deal for each, especially when a holdout can perform highway robbery?
The MPEG-LA deal has an explicit promise of FRAND, and it's totally bizarre that this can happen. I hope we'll hear them describe why anybody should ever trust them again. Maybe they only cover US licenses? I am not an expert here, just a hobbyist following the issue, but something makes zero sense.
The GSM deal has an even more interesting history. Moto was one of a handful of companies that invented the GSM standard with the intent of splitting up the business between 'em. You can Google & find some academic and industry papers that claim Moto was active in keeping Japanese competitors out of the European market, and slowing GSM's acceptance in other markets, for its purposes way back in the 90s. This appears to have been tolerated because the various government-owned telecoms wanted to promote the European businesses (Nokia, Ericcson, Alcatel, ..., look 'em up) and so turned a blind eye to blatant anti-trust actions. To get the GSM accepted around the world, the patent-holders went low-key on rights, but I don't think there's ANY formal commitment on the books to do anything Fair, Reasonable or Non-Discriminatory. (In this regard, I think Mr. Mueller has not paid enough attention to specific rules and contracts, relying too much on common sense and sound legal principles? in normal times, quite a plus, but not so much here, I fear.)
The one thing that this news DOES confirm is my suspicion last August that Motorola rushed Google into buying them by pulling the pin on a grenade of a huge patent kerfuffle against any & all. At the time, Jha and Icahn (CEO & biggest shareholder, respectively) said they were going after ?newcomers? in smartphones, which many took to mean the Android partners, to exploit their patent holdings. That would've killed Android, so Google paid whatever it had to ? fell on the grenade ? to shut up Moto.
Does the fact that Google offered NO assurances to the EU anti-trust regulators by today's deadline mean that they are going to let go of the deal, and Moto is free to make a mockery of Schmidt's ?bogus patents? claim? It's too bad that no real journalists have seriously picked up on this thread (only some lightweight stories quoting Mueller in Bloomberg, the WSJ, NYT and the Guardian) because it sure looks HUGE about the future of Android and the whole smartphone industry.
a complaint that accused Apple, Oracle and Microsoft of using patents as "a weapon" to stop innovation.
Unlike Moto's game, these guys aren't using patents that are under FRAND.
personally I'm starting to think that all patents that are declared part of a standard need to either become free use or be administered by some 3rd party that gets like 5% of the royalties and then the tech companies split the rest equally per the whole standards rules. Not per standard but one group that over sees all royalties for all standards. And has nothing to do with the markets involved. And anyone that wants to use the standard, regardless of size etc, pays a flat rate per year rather than all this % of sales nonsense.
Motorola makes the most solid phone circuitry in the business. In that respect, Apple is mediocre. Apple's innovation was the dropped call.
If GOOGMOT is evil, then what does that make Apple? Remember, Apple is telling Samsung they can't make rectangular devices. I guess Apple thinks they have a patent on rectangular shaped mobile devices (even though those shaped devices pre-dated the iPhone).
You can't be calling Google and Moto evil while somehow thinking Apple is a saint. Apple started the fuss with useless patent lawsuits and with Motorola being the pioneer that Apple built its "phone" on, I'll bet Apple isn't going to be the one to end it. After all, Apple is the newbie of the cellular phone world. Motorola is just welcoming them to the party
Seriously? Did you ever see the first videos of Android OS? It looked a lot like windows Mobile. Which is to say ugly and not finger friendly. Then iOS was shown to the world then you saw Google completely rewrite the UI to blatantly copy the iOS interface.
There's no set formula for determining royalties on (F)RAND-committed IP as far as I know.
the formula is the very nature of FRAND. It is not fair, reasonable etc to make one company pay many times more what everyone else does even if the % is the same. Because the dollars are not.
How is it discriminatory if Moto is asking the same 2.25% consistently, with even the articles source (FOSS Patents) noting that an industry exec with no connections to either Apple nor Microsoft says they've asked the same rate for years?
For it to be non-discriminatory they would need to be demanding the same amount (per unit) from all other H.264 licensees - including other Android OEMs and (ironically) Google.
BTW, is it possible to be a H.264 licensee if you are asserting patents against the standard itself? Moto isn't currently a H.264 licensee, but Google is...
The MPEG-LA deal is even stranger. You can go to their website and see their claim that THEY license AVC/h.264 as a pool. So why is Moto, which put its patents into the pool, trying to separately sue Microsoft over Windows 7, IE9, WMP and Xbox, when Microsoft is already a licensor of the patents?
Moto is not part of the H.264 licensor pool. Check it out at MPEG-LA.
Of course, this just makes a total mockery of Google's WebM strategy. H.264 clearly has much stronger patent protection than WebM, but even that isn't sufficient to stop a patent troll like Moto (soon to be Google). If H.264's pool isn't sufficient to protect H.264 licensees, then there is no way that WebM is not patent encumbered.
Quote:
The one thing that this news DOES confirm is my suspicion last August that Motorola rushed Google into buying them by pulling the pin on a grenade of a huge patent kerfuffle against any & all. At the time, Jha and Icahn (CEO & biggest shareholder, respectively) said they were going after ?newcomers? in smartphones, which many took to mean the Android partners, to exploit their patent holdings. That would've killed Android, so Google paid whatever it had to ? fell on the grenade ? to shut up Moto.
Agreed. Apple and Microsoft have very strong portfolios and can likely defend themselves against Moto. But Samsung would have had much more trouble, and HTC wouldn't have stood a chance. Moto had Google over a barrel and took them to the cleaners.
Just a thought -is it possible that the Motorola FRAND payment was already made when Apple bought the components? Similar to the issues raised by the Samsung case where Qualcomm provided docs to prove that it that they were covered already and that Samsung might be "double dipping"? If that's the case, then it's unfair and discriminatory.
Moto is not part of the H.264 licensor pool. Check it out at MPEG-LA.
I stand corrected, but even more astonished that Motorola was allowed to claim patents as essential to h.264 without contributing them to the pool.
I note also that Google has put no patents into the pool but licenses h.264; that seems also interesting, too. Any takers on a wager that the Google/Moto deal falls thru, given that its completion implies Google can license everybody else's work for a pittance, while they refuse to license their own work except at a high price?
PS: Any guesses on how Moto patents got declared essential to h.264 without their being forced into the pool?
Revoking a 2.25% license on a 50c chip based solely on that chip being sold to selected handset makers, then demanding the same on a completed handset is where the discriminatory and unfair part comes in.
I'm not sure you meant to use the word "revoking" in your sentence. If I understand the fight between Moto and Apple in the EU, Apple is also asserting that the Moto patent was paid by Qualicom to make the chip that Apple used in their iDevices, so applying it to the end devices at the same rate is wrong AND Apple is being charged twice to have access to ONE patent: Once at the component level and again at the finished good level.
I don't see Moto winning this case if Apple has already paid for the patent as part of acquiring the Qualicom chip/sub-assembly. Also, imagine if Detroit wanted to give a automobile communications capability. Let's see, 2.25% of a $50,000 car....
Comments
And. . .?
Advice: Stop while you're behind.
Please use some common sense. A 3G phone will probably have 50-60 FRAND encumbered patents. If 2.5-3.5% per patent was reasonable, then someone like Apple (who does not own any offsetting FRAND patents) could be paying as much as 200% of the selling price just in royalties. Clearly, that's absurd..
Try 20-30 THOUSAND FRAND patents per device and you'd be closer to the mark.
What did anybody expect from Google? They have made money by using content from others to benefit their search. To top it all, the owners of Google benefited from SJ guidance when they started the company. A certain snake in the grass did a Trojan Horse on Apple, regarding the iPhone. Guess who it was?!
Your overactive imagination?
Advice: Stop while you're behind.
No one has shown my points to be wrong yet. Pehaps you're the one that can show Moto expects more from Apple than their other licensees?
2.25% of the price of a chip is how most companies pay the fee when using the chip in a finished product, Motorola is revoking the license of chipmakers when the sell their chips to selected companies and demanding the same fee on completed products, which is unfair and discriminatory.
Are you certain you haven't confused Motorola with Samsung?
When you use terms like good and evil you sounds emotional which means you aren't being objective.
As for their slogan, it's a slogan, not a philosophy, manifesto or a way or doing business. Apple had a Think Different campaign yet during the Q&A session of WWDC in 1997 Jobs basically said that he has no problem with not thinking different. It's about thinking better. Do you really think Apple is "green" because it's good for the environment or because it's good for their bottom line? For profit companies aren't hear to set your morale compass, you set that yourself when you choose to buy or not buy a product.
Though we disagree often your, posts are always a pleasure to read...well thought out and pretty neutral when it comes to perspective.
Pleasure to have you around.
The article seems to be equating Motorola Mobility's allegedly outrageous behaviour with its H.264 patents demanding a 2.25% royalty, and then suggesting that a royalty rate of 2.25% for a 3G patent is equally outrageous. Without more information about the patents in these areas it is difficult to evaluate this argument.
I've been trying to track this issue for some time. Basically, this guy Mueller sources about 110% of all the real information; if he doesn't report it, it goes unsaid. FossPatents.BlogSpot.Com. Read his conflict statement and be as careful as he is about separating fact & opinion ? you sound like the type who'll be able to do so, but this is a huge, complex area and it may not be easy.
On to your concerns that this sounds like people have their hair on fire: there were something like 1200 patents that went into the various pieces of the GSM standard; if you don't implement all, you don't have a GSM capable device. If each one is worth 2.25% of your product, you would have to pay about $18,000 on a $600 phone. See a possible case that 2.25% each might not be reasonable? Obviously, nobody is paying that. And the claim that the IP Moto gets from other GSM Musketeers (?all for one & one for all?) makes it fair still can't hold water. This is simply an attempt to lock Apple out of GSM telephones in Europe. Period.
The MPEG-LA deal is even stranger. You can go to their website and see their claim that THEY license AVC/h.264 as a pool. So why is Moto, which put its patents into the pool, trying to separately sue Microsoft over Windows 7, IE9, WMP and Xbox, when Microsoft is already a licensor of the patents? And why at a rate that is many times as much as MPEG-LA's claimed rate? Supposedly, when these firms all agreed to put their patents into a pool, they agreed to a split on the (very modest) licensing revenues, and a company that wants to implement it can sign one deal, not worrying about one individual such as Moto holding them up. I never saw a formal count of the h.264 patents, but scanning thru the list, with possible overlaps due to multiple countries, I'd guess 3,000 of 'em. Who is going to implement h.264 if they have to negotiate a separate deal for each, especially when a holdout can perform highway robbery?
The MPEG-LA deal has an explicit promise of FRAND, and it's totally bizarre that this can happen. I hope we'll hear them describe why anybody should ever trust them again. Maybe they only cover US licenses? I am not an expert here, just a hobbyist following the issue, but something makes zero sense.
The GSM deal has an even more interesting history. Moto was one of a handful of companies that invented the GSM standard with the intent of splitting up the business between 'em. You can Google & find some academic and industry papers that claim Moto was active in keeping Japanese competitors out of the European market, and slowing GSM's acceptance in other markets, for its purposes way back in the 90s. This appears to have been tolerated because the various government-owned telecoms wanted to promote the European businesses (Nokia, Ericcson, Alcatel, ..., look 'em up) and so turned a blind eye to blatant anti-trust actions. To get the GSM accepted around the world, the patent-holders went low-key on rights, but I don't think there's ANY formal commitment on the books to do anything Fair, Reasonable or Non-Discriminatory. (In this regard, I think Mr. Mueller has not paid enough attention to specific rules and contracts, relying too much on common sense and sound legal principles? in normal times, quite a plus, but not so much here, I fear.)
The one thing that this news DOES confirm is my suspicion last August that Motorola rushed Google into buying them by pulling the pin on a grenade of a huge patent kerfuffle against any & all. At the time, Jha and Icahn (CEO & biggest shareholder, respectively) said they were going after ?newcomers? in smartphones, which many took to mean the Android partners, to exploit their patent holdings. That would've killed Android, so Google paid whatever it had to ? fell on the grenade ? to shut up Moto.
Does the fact that Google offered NO assurances to the EU anti-trust regulators by today's deadline mean that they are going to let go of the deal, and Moto is free to make a mockery of Schmidt's ?bogus patents? claim? It's too bad that no real journalists have seriously picked up on this thread (only some lightweight stories quoting Mueller in Bloomberg, the WSJ, NYT and the Guardian) because it sure looks HUGE about the future of Android and the whole smartphone industry.
a complaint that accused Apple, Oracle and Microsoft of using patents as "a weapon" to stop innovation.
Unlike Moto's game, these guys aren't using patents that are under FRAND.
personally I'm starting to think that all patents that are declared part of a standard need to either become free use or be administered by some 3rd party that gets like 5% of the royalties and then the tech companies split the rest equally per the whole standards rules. Not per standard but one group that over sees all royalties for all standards. And has nothing to do with the markets involved. And anyone that wants to use the standard, regardless of size etc, pays a flat rate per year rather than all this % of sales nonsense.
but of course neither is likely to happen
How is it discriminatory if Moto is asking the same 2.25% consistently,
Because it is supposed to be the same amount, not rate. And 2.25% of $100k in sales is a lot different than 2.25% of $100m
Motorola makes the most solid phone circuitry in the business. In that respect, Apple is mediocre. Apple's innovation was the dropped call.
If GOOGMOT is evil, then what does that make Apple? Remember, Apple is telling Samsung they can't make rectangular devices. I guess Apple thinks they have a patent on rectangular shaped mobile devices (even though those shaped devices pre-dated the iPhone).
You can't be calling Google and Moto evil while somehow thinking Apple is a saint. Apple started the fuss with useless patent lawsuits and with Motorola being the pioneer that Apple built its "phone" on, I'll bet Apple isn't going to be the one to end it. After all, Apple is the newbie of the cellular phone world. Motorola is just welcoming them to the party
Seriously? Did you ever see the first videos of Android OS? It looked a lot like windows Mobile. Which is to say ugly and not finger friendly. Then iOS was shown to the world then you saw Google completely rewrite the UI to blatantly copy the iOS interface.
There's no set formula for determining royalties on (F)RAND-committed IP as far as I know.
the formula is the very nature of FRAND. It is not fair, reasonable etc to make one company pay many times more what everyone else does even if the % is the same. Because the dollars are not.
Motorola makes the most solid phone circuitry in the business. In that respect, Apple is mediocre. Apple's innovation was the dropped call.
Its AT&T that drops calls, not Apple Einstein. Reading the rest of your post was pointless after this comment.
How is it discriminatory if Moto is asking the same 2.25% consistently, with even the articles source (FOSS Patents) noting that an industry exec with no connections to either Apple nor Microsoft says they've asked the same rate for years?
For it to be non-discriminatory they would need to be demanding the same amount (per unit) from all other H.264 licensees - including other Android OEMs and (ironically) Google.
BTW, is it possible to be a H.264 licensee if you are asserting patents against the standard itself? Moto isn't currently a H.264 licensee, but Google is...
The MPEG-LA deal is even stranger. You can go to their website and see their claim that THEY license AVC/h.264 as a pool. So why is Moto, which put its patents into the pool, trying to separately sue Microsoft over Windows 7, IE9, WMP and Xbox, when Microsoft is already a licensor of the patents?
Moto is not part of the H.264 licensor pool. Check it out at MPEG-LA.
Of course, this just makes a total mockery of Google's WebM strategy. H.264 clearly has much stronger patent protection than WebM, but even that isn't sufficient to stop a patent troll like Moto (soon to be Google). If H.264's pool isn't sufficient to protect H.264 licensees, then there is no way that WebM is not patent encumbered.
The one thing that this news DOES confirm is my suspicion last August that Motorola rushed Google into buying them by pulling the pin on a grenade of a huge patent kerfuffle against any & all. At the time, Jha and Icahn (CEO & biggest shareholder, respectively) said they were going after ?newcomers? in smartphones, which many took to mean the Android partners, to exploit their patent holdings. That would've killed Android, so Google paid whatever it had to ? fell on the grenade ? to shut up Moto.
Agreed. Apple and Microsoft have very strong portfolios and can likely defend themselves against Moto. But Samsung would have had much more trouble, and HTC wouldn't have stood a chance. Moto had Google over a barrel and took them to the cleaners.
Mueller raises that issue here:
http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2012...-sales-in.html
Because it is supposed to be the same amount, not rate. And 2.25% of $100k in sales is a lot different than 2.25% of $100m
it's the same amount per dollar.
i like mooggot better
motgle
Moto is not part of the H.264 licensor pool. Check it out at MPEG-LA.
I stand corrected, but even more astonished that Motorola was allowed to claim patents as essential to h.264 without contributing them to the pool.
I note also that Google has put no patents into the pool but licenses h.264; that seems also interesting, too. Any takers on a wager that the Google/Moto deal falls thru, given that its completion implies Google can license everybody else's work for a pittance, while they refuse to license their own work except at a high price?
PS: Any guesses on how Moto patents got declared essential to h.264 without their being forced into the pool?
Revoking a 2.25% license on a 50c chip based solely on that chip being sold to selected handset makers, then demanding the same on a completed handset is where the discriminatory and unfair part comes in.
I'm not sure you meant to use the word "revoking" in your sentence. If I understand the fight between Moto and Apple in the EU, Apple is also asserting that the Moto patent was paid by Qualicom to make the chip that Apple used in their iDevices, so applying it to the end devices at the same rate is wrong AND Apple is being charged twice to have access to ONE patent: Once at the component level and again at the finished good level.
I don't see Moto winning this case if Apple has already paid for the patent as part of acquiring the Qualicom chip/sub-assembly. Also, imagine if Detroit wanted to give a automobile communications capability. Let's see, 2.25% of a $50,000 car....