Glad to hear this. Banning devices is too extreme a punishment that mostly hurts consumers. Getting a third party mediator to assess a monetary agreement seems like a much more sound option. Hopefully something gets worked out.
Unless the case is about blatant infringement of IP, e.g. when a company contests even the existence of a licensable patent, and goes to market using someone else's invention/design to profit from. We've already seen Samsung doing this pretty clearly with their iPhone and iPad 'clones'. Thus the $1 billion dollar fine + limited ban against Samsung.
When a patent falls under FRAND rules, a company must license the tech and do so without discrimination. Samsung attempted to leverage certain FRAND patents to get "more for less" out of Apple. They refused to give them non-discriminitory licensing of those FRAND patents, and then moved to get a ban in place too. This is why the ITC is getting scolded, and why the ban is not going to happen.
Of course, bans are never a good thing, but sometimes necessary to prevent companies doing exactly the kind of thing Samsung has done with their iPhone copies.
Amazon did not have a monopoly, they might have established one, they might not have provided this did not happen.
Apple's actions caused the price of Ebooks to spike over 18% on average when implemented. It took about 2 years for the price to fall down. Consumers bought 12-17% (depending on which large publisher it is) less books after this happened. NTY bestseller books rose over 42%, amazingly, Amazon's average prices rose over 14%.
Now, Apple and other companies do sell against Amazon. If Apple does not want to compete with Amazon that is there choice. There could only be a monopoly if that happened.
I fail to see what the side against what Apple did is. Especially when 5 of the large publishers settles with the DOJ.
Apple is a great company, every great companies make mistakes.
-QAMF
The irony here is that Amazon DID in fact have a near-monopoly on ebooks, and their pricing was often "below cost" on books… so that "spike" you refer to is actually the price of books "normalizing", returning to where they should be, rather than riding at the "artifically lowered" prices set EXCLUSIVELY by Amazon.
Another big difference in the picture that includes Apple is that, in Apple's iBooks world, the PUBLISHER sets the prices, not Apple, since Apple isn't actually in the role of the traditional Retailer/Reseller (whereas, Amazon IS in the role of retailer and controls the selling price). Apple simply said to the Publishers, our agreement is this:
- You set your own pricing. We get "X" (whatever 30% comes out to).
- You can't sell your product to someone else for LESS (meaning, don't undercut our bookstore in your pricing to others).
Apple is more like a big digital Mall, where vendors setup 'shop' and sell their product wares. Music, Movies, Apps, Books, whatever. Apple's singular condition is, if you resell this elsewhere at a lower price, you have to sell it here at that lower price as well.
Perhaps that's where they got into trouble with the "price fixing" concept? Except that it isn't really. More like demanding "low price matching" which, well, seems like a commerce standard to me. Everywhere I look companies announce "We'll meet any low price!". If that equals "price fixing" the DOJ has a lot of work to do to prosecute them all.
what a shameful act of injustice. If you can't beat them with innovation in the market place, and if you can't beat them with litigation in the courtroom, then go running to your President for the hope you paid him enough to do the deed. What about the price fixing Apple? You think Obama will help you out with that as well? Pathetic. Guaranteed to have some backlash with markets outside of the US.
Oh... Don't tell me... Let me guess....
You are a stock trader who took a position based on this band taking effect...
what a shameful act of injustice. If you can't beat them with innovation in the market place, and if you can't beat them with litigation in the courtroom, then go running to your President for the hope you paid him enough to do the deed. What about the price fixing Apple? You think Obama will help you out with that as well? Pathetic. Guaranteed to have some backlash with markets outside of the US.
You obviously didn't read or comprehend the article and what Samscum was doing and how the ITC made a dumb ruling. Oh well.
Apple wasn't price fixing. that's total BS. All they wanted was to have an equal playing field between all resellers of ebooks and have a standard LIST Price and 30% margin and then each reseller can then resell the books at whatever price they want to. The way Amazon does business is they had complely unfair pricing than what they wanted to charge Apple. Apple just wanted an equal playing field like ANY company would want. The only way to do that is to have a CONSISTENT retail pricing/discounting structure that created an equal playing field, much like how MOST companies on the planet work. Apple has to have 30% margin because when a user downloads content from iTunes and the app store, they have to pay Akamai a large chunk of that 30% for content delivery. And Apple felt it would be best to consider a CONSISTENT pricing structure to make it fair for all. I read Jobs email that he sent.
Just in case you didn't know, Apple spends the least amount of money lobbying and campaign contributions than MOST high tech companies, and Samsung is amongst the highest that lobby in this country. So if you want to accuse anyone of trying to pay off politicians, look at Samsung.
Amazon did not have a monopoly, they might have established one, they might not have provided this did not happen.
Apple's actions caused the price of Ebooks to spike over 18% on average when implemented. It took about 2 years for the price to fall down. Consumers bought 12-17% (depending on which large publisher it is) less books after this happened. NTY bestseller books rose over 42%, amazingly, Amazon's average prices rose over 14%.
Now, Apple and other companies do sell against Amazon. If Apple does not want to compete with Amazon that is there choice. There could only be a monopoly if that happened.
I fail to see what the side against what Apple did is. Especially when 5 of the large publishers settles with the DOJ.
Apple is a great company, every great companies make mistakes.
-QAMF
Amazon had cheaper pricing because of what they were charging Apple. There was no RETAIL LIST price standard and a WHOLESALE pricing model that's consistent.
Amazon was undercutting Apple tremendously as they had unfair pricing. What Apple suggested is to have a RETAIL LIST PRICE, a UNIFIED WHOLESALE cost and that Apple needed 30% because that's REASONABLE mark up. So, yes, in order for the publishers to make decent money they raised the RETAIL LIST price up in order to make an EQUAL playing field.
If you go to any retail store, they have a retail list price and a wholesale price. Unless the mfg has a discount structure for large resellers that buy bigger quantity, they usually charge the same wholesale cost. I know those that have little background in this have a tough time understanding what was going on, but I wouldn't call it unfair at all. It's just getting these guys to understand how to set their pricing structure so it's fair for the biggest download resellers, which is Apple and Amazon, among others. What they actually sell something for is different.
I think it's how the media, the judge and readers interpret this stuff since most of the people (media, judge and readers) don't comprehend this situation. I think they should have had a consistent pricing model to begin with but the publishers didn't get it and they didn't understand the digital download industry, much like the music industry didn't understand the digital download industry either at first.
what a shameful act of injustice. If you can't beat them with innovation in the market place, and if you can't beat them with litigation in the courtroom, then go running to your President for the hope you paid him enough to do the deed. What about the price fixing Apple? You think Obama will help you out with that as well? Pathetic. Guaranteed to have some backlash with markets outside of the US.
Don't you just love these one post wonders. They drive by, deposit a giant, smelly turd on the carpet, and then just disappear.
In that sense it is a good overturn. If the general sentiment is true that it can start a 'tit for tat' war between nations and the ITC as well as generally promoting the notion that SEP patents are worth less than non SEP patents there's a danger there as there will be little incentive to pursue SEP
It is an ACCEPTED FACT by all SEP patent holders and SEP implementers that all SEP patents are worth far less than non-SEP patents for the following reasons:
1) Almost all SEP patent themselves were worthless prior to being incorporated into the standard and becoming SEP. This gives the SEP patent holders an economic incentive to pledge the patents for standardization (see #3 below).
2) To be accepted into the standard, the SEP patent holder must pledge FRAND terms. This action alone devalues the SEP patent to the extent that the SEP patent holder can no longer license SEP patents for more than FRAND rates.
3) The primary driver for patent holders to pledge patents to SEP was because the FRAND royalties they may capture from SEP patents can be far greater than the royalties they would capture if the patent wasn't part of the standards because of #1 above and because there are so many other non-infringing methods/technologies that makes the patent worthless on its own merits.
If Samsung thought so highly of its 3G wireless patents which are center of the ITC dispute and thought that it could get more than FRAND rates for these patents, it had the option NOT to pledge these patents to the standards and instead try to capture non-FRAND royalties for these patents. But of course it didn't precisely because the 3G wireless patents weren't worth that much on their own merits alone. So Samsung pledged these patents to SEP and agreed to charge only FRAND royalties.
The Presidential veto has, if anything, strengthened the SEP regime in the sense that those who think their patents are more valuable than what FRAND royalties would justify will not pledge their patents to the standards while those who think their patents are less valuable than what FRAND royalties would justify will be more than happy to pledge their patents to the standards and follow all the rules. in the end, the SEP abusers and trolls will voluntarily stay away from the standards process which is a GOOD THING.
I've been waiting for this decision one way or the other, and so has Apple.
Guess what? I think we get a notice of an upcoming product announcement within a week of this happening this Monday, so by August 12. First this is the correct decision, as the story states. Apple was waiting for this to shake out for two very good reasons. First, if they announced a product before this decison (or rather non-decision if not vetoed), it would be easy for intellectually dishonest people to advance this argument:
what is the harm - the product is or soon will be replaced.
Now this is not correct logic; principle is important. So they waited so as to not set in play future slippery slope type events. Secondly whether the product is banned or not most likely plays in to just what they plan to do with iPhone 4 availability in the USA. I think they should keep selling them. Anyone more than the most casual user will really need to replace far sooner than than if they were to buy something not about to become iOS Obsolete. Now the ultra casual user won't be bothered by this, they just wanted an iPhone, and the cheaper the better. When they eventually replace, they probably buy another "cheaper" iPhone.
Anyone other than an ultra casual user, (and some that start out that way don't stay that way - they dive deeper into the ecosystem) will want to replace sooner rather than later and will upgrade to if not the latest and greatest iPhone, something more upscale than iPhone 4 is currently in the Apple product line. Are they out anything? Not really. Cost zero on contract and sell the phone for now, close to $200 and whenever their sale date rolls around, probably a hundred bucks, and the phone goes to India or Brazil or whatever they do with them. I traded in an iPhone 4 just this week. It had been kicking around since October because of difficulty unlocking with AT&T, and then I got busy and just put it off for a while. I figured I better sell it before the product announcement, so I did. I was shocked what Amazon was willing to give me for something I was ready to toss out of frustration with unlocking.
Oh and speaking of conversion to Apple, that is me. I used to be an anything but Apple. Wife had an iPod, but her first iPhone was the iPhone 4 we just sold. I told her why not get the evo, or the galaxy whatever at that time. She was insistent. Needless to say 10 months later I got the 4S on release day, she got iPad for christmas, I bought one last summer, and got one for my father. Wife got her retina Mac Book Pro last summer too. Oh and I didn't tell you but I also traded the 4S at the same time as the 4. for an extra hundred bucks or whatever. Why did I trade that newish phone? Cause on release day last year this former anything but Apple bought 5 thats FIVE iPhone 5. Wife, myself, parents and brother. And that 4S, Well, I got back every penny I paid for it, plus the early termination fee when I sold it.
It will be an Apple world people, and this decision is the tip off to something exciting coming up.
Do some basic research into how these things work. Yes, completely legal. It wasn't a court ruling. Obama really had little to do with it. It was a decision fully within the powers of the U.S. Trade Representative, who overruled the US International Trade Commission.
TS asked a civil question and most AIrs in the know kindly answer.
I have asked some pretty rudimentary questions and one AI long-tooth answered my simple question so kindly I quickly forgot he was sometimes a might heavy with a few of my vacant points. The dude has standards yet was willing to help someone who needed a point to follow the discussion. I now see him in a totally different light, a more whole and complete person who does want honest discussion to take place at AI; and should he jump on one of my 'out of touch with reality' comments again, then, what the heck—we learn by our mistakes.
Don't you just love these one post wonders. They drive by, deposit a giant, smelly turd on the carpet, and then just disappear.
I treated them like spam when I was a mod. We see a fair few more now than we did then.
That's part of the reason I never want dedicated forums (in the traditional Internet definition) to die. Imagine a world where our conversations here are in, say, WordPress or Vanilla or LiveFyre or any of those other idiotic cross-website comment services. :wow:
TS asked a civil question and most Airs in the know kindly answer.
Hey, it's not a big deal. I'm chill about just about everything, or so I'm told. It's just that right here, in this specific instance, my desire to see the foundation of what this country represents upheld, my desire to see Apple succeed, and my interest in nothing other than absolute Truth slammed right together. There's a good quote; I forget what it's from. "My country right or wrong; if right, to be kept right, if wrong, to be set right." I wouldn't want Apple saved from anything they did wrong by my country going against its own laws and principles, and I wouldn't want Apple to win a court battle with lies.
Fortunately, neither of those happened here, and Apple should never have lost in the first place.
It is an ACCEPTED FACT by all SEP patent holders and SEP implementers that all SEP patents are worth far less than non-SEP patents for the following reasons:
1) Almost all SEP patent themselves were worthless prior to being incorporated into the standard and becoming SEP. This gives the SEP patent holders an economic incentive to pledge the patents for standardization (see #3 below).
2) To be accepted into the standard, the SEP patent holder must pledge FRAND terms. This action alone devalues the SEP patent to the extent that the SEP patent holder can no longer license SEP patents for more than FRAND rates.
3) The primary driver for patent holders to pledge patents to SEP was because the FRAND royalties they may capture from SEP patents can be far greater than the royalties they would capture if the patent wasn't part of the standards because of #1 above and because there are so many other non-infringing methods/technologies that makes the patent worthless on its own merits.
If Samsung thought so highly of its 3G wireless patents which are center of the ITC dispute and thought that it could get more than FRAND rates for these patents, it had the option NOT to pledge these patents to the standards and instead try to capture non-FRAND royalties for these patents. But of course it didn't precisely because the 3G wireless patents weren't worth that much on their own merits alone. So Samsung pledged these patents to SEP and agreed to charge only FRAND royalties.
The Presidential veto has, if anything, strengthened the SEP regime in the sense that those who think their patents are more valuable than what FRAND royalties would justify will not pledge their patents to the standards while those who think their patents are less valuable than what FRAND royalties would justify will be more than happy to pledge their patents to the standards and follow all the rules. in the end, the SEP abusers and trolls will voluntarily stay away from the standards process which is a GOOD THING.
Thanks I have learned a lot reading your posts today, it all makes sense now.
President Obama raised the FRAND issue over a year ago. Then he was openly warning the patent courts and ITC how they needed to rule on FRAND patents. This decision was written in stone months ago.
I'm still unclear about what this is actually all about. So Samsung has a patent on something related to 3G GSM technology that Apple used in early versions of the iPhone and iPad. Did Apple refuse to pay royalties on this patent or did Samsung refuse to license it? Did Samsung offer to license to Apple but at rates far higher than other licensees were paying? Is this patent really subject to FRAND or not? Why has this gotten to this point? Who's really the bad guy here? Apple or Samsung?
The details have been fully explained multiple times in my previous posts on the topic. Here's the most recent explanation, which will answer all your questions:
Samsung offered license to Apple on non-FRAND terms. Specifically, Samsung demanded that Apple license non-SEP Apple patents to Samsung in exchange for Samsung licensing SEP patents to Apple on presumably FRAND terms.
No. Samsung did not "demand that Apple license non-SEP Apple patents". They did offer it as an option.
Quote:
President smacked down ITC for being an idiot and specifically said that it does matter what the terms were and those terms have to be FRAND.
While the letter emphasized a concern over FRAND, it also specifically noted that:
1) Bans over FRAND patents were still an option under certain circumstances (including the reason the ITC gave in its ruling, which was Apple's lack of negotiations):
From Reuters: "Froman on Saturday said the ITC should thoroughly examine the public interest ramifications of its rulings in disputes over standard essential patents."
In a news update Reuters reports that the Obama administration overturned the ITC ruling because of "public interest ramifications" rather than concerns over the fact the involved patents included at least one that was standards-essential.
So...... Clearly means something entirely different from your interpretation.
what a shameful act of injustice. If you can't beat them with innovation in the market place, and if you can't beat them with litigation in the courtroom, then go running to your President for the hope you paid him enough to do the deed. What about the price fixing Apple? You think Obama will help you out with that as well? Pathetic. Guaranteed to have some backlash with markets outside of the US.
The patents are both exhausted and FRAND. They should not be able to collect twice (both from the chip maker and from Apple). If they should be paid a second time it should be at the same rate others are charged as they are FRAND patents. So far Samsung has asked for 50x the normal rate they charge others in violation of Samsung's FRAND obligations.
what a shameful act of injustice. If you can't beat them with innovation in the market place, and if you can't beat them with litigation in the courtroom, then go running to your President for the hope you paid him enough to do the deed. What about the price fixing Apple? You think Obama will help you out with that as well? Pathetic. Guaranteed to have some backlash with markets outside of the US.
There should be a script added to the site that goes something like:
IF number_of_posts EQ 1 AND TEXT_INCLUDES innovation THEN ban!!!!
There should be a script added to the site that goes something like:
IF number_of_posts EQ 1 AND TEXT_INCLUDES innovation THEN ban!!!!
Ha! That's remarkably similar to the code of some of the old spambots we got here. The code broke when we moved to Huddler, so their user page's biography fields were all full of "IS_HUMAN = 1; [" or something…
Ah, here we go. Say what you will about Huddler, but its search actually works (and is good!) unlike vBulletin's.
Comments
Quote:
Originally Posted by DroidFTW
Glad to hear this. Banning devices is too extreme a punishment that mostly hurts consumers. Getting a third party mediator to assess a monetary agreement seems like a much more sound option. Hopefully something gets worked out.
Unless the case is about blatant infringement of IP, e.g. when a company contests even the existence of a licensable patent, and goes to market using someone else's invention/design to profit from. We've already seen Samsung doing this pretty clearly with their iPhone and iPad 'clones'. Thus the $1 billion dollar fine + limited ban against Samsung.
When a patent falls under FRAND rules, a company must license the tech and do so without discrimination. Samsung attempted to leverage certain FRAND patents to get "more for less" out of Apple. They refused to give them non-discriminitory licensing of those FRAND patents, and then moved to get a ban in place too. This is why the ITC is getting scolded, and why the ban is not going to happen.
Of course, bans are never a good thing, but sometimes necessary to prevent companies doing exactly the kind of thing Samsung has done with their iPhone copies.
SEPs should never ever be used as a legal weapon. Otherwise all standards will become trojan overnight.
Quote:
Originally Posted by QAMF
Amazon did not have a monopoly, they might have established one, they might not have provided this did not happen.
Apple's actions caused the price of Ebooks to spike over 18% on average when implemented. It took about 2 years for the price to fall down. Consumers bought 12-17% (depending on which large publisher it is) less books after this happened. NTY bestseller books rose over 42%, amazingly, Amazon's average prices rose over 14%.
Now, Apple and other companies do sell against Amazon. If Apple does not want to compete with Amazon that is there choice. There could only be a monopoly if that happened.
I fail to see what the side against what Apple did is. Especially when 5 of the large publishers settles with the DOJ.
Apple is a great company, every great companies make mistakes.
-QAMF
The irony here is that Amazon DID in fact have a near-monopoly on ebooks, and their pricing was often "below cost" on books… so that "spike" you refer to is actually the price of books "normalizing", returning to where they should be, rather than riding at the "artifically lowered" prices set EXCLUSIVELY by Amazon.
Another big difference in the picture that includes Apple is that, in Apple's iBooks world, the PUBLISHER sets the prices, not Apple, since Apple isn't actually in the role of the traditional Retailer/Reseller (whereas, Amazon IS in the role of retailer and controls the selling price). Apple simply said to the Publishers, our agreement is this:
- You set your own pricing. We get "X" (whatever 30% comes out to).
- You can't sell your product to someone else for LESS (meaning, don't undercut our bookstore in your pricing to others).
Apple is more like a big digital Mall, where vendors setup 'shop' and sell their product wares. Music, Movies, Apps, Books, whatever. Apple's singular condition is, if you resell this elsewhere at a lower price, you have to sell it here at that lower price as well.
Perhaps that's where they got into trouble with the "price fixing" concept? Except that it isn't really. More like demanding "low price matching" which, well, seems like a commerce standard to me. Everywhere I look companies announce "We'll meet any low price!". If that equals "price fixing" the DOJ has a lot of work to do to prosecute them all.
Where is KDarling? Didn't he quote the ITC decision in other threads to show that Apple is actually in the wrong here?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Stevel
what a shameful act of injustice. If you can't beat them with innovation in the market place, and if you can't beat them with litigation in the courtroom, then go running to your President for the hope you paid him enough to do the deed. What about the price fixing Apple? You think Obama will help you out with that as well? Pathetic. Guaranteed to have some backlash with markets outside of the US.
Oh... Don't tell me... Let me guess....
You are a stock trader who took a position based on this band taking effect...
Well, c'est la vie...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Stevel
what a shameful act of injustice. If you can't beat them with innovation in the market place, and if you can't beat them with litigation in the courtroom, then go running to your President for the hope you paid him enough to do the deed. What about the price fixing Apple? You think Obama will help you out with that as well? Pathetic. Guaranteed to have some backlash with markets outside of the US.
You obviously didn't read or comprehend the article and what Samscum was doing and how the ITC made a dumb ruling. Oh well.
Apple wasn't price fixing. that's total BS. All they wanted was to have an equal playing field between all resellers of ebooks and have a standard LIST Price and 30% margin and then each reseller can then resell the books at whatever price they want to. The way Amazon does business is they had complely unfair pricing than what they wanted to charge Apple. Apple just wanted an equal playing field like ANY company would want. The only way to do that is to have a CONSISTENT retail pricing/discounting structure that created an equal playing field, much like how MOST companies on the planet work. Apple has to have 30% margin because when a user downloads content from iTunes and the app store, they have to pay Akamai a large chunk of that 30% for content delivery. And Apple felt it would be best to consider a CONSISTENT pricing structure to make it fair for all. I read Jobs email that he sent.
Just in case you didn't know, Apple spends the least amount of money lobbying and campaign contributions than MOST high tech companies, and Samsung is amongst the highest that lobby in this country. So if you want to accuse anyone of trying to pay off politicians, look at Samsung.
Quote:
Originally Posted by QAMF
Amazon did not have a monopoly, they might have established one, they might not have provided this did not happen.
Apple's actions caused the price of Ebooks to spike over 18% on average when implemented. It took about 2 years for the price to fall down. Consumers bought 12-17% (depending on which large publisher it is) less books after this happened. NTY bestseller books rose over 42%, amazingly, Amazon's average prices rose over 14%.
Now, Apple and other companies do sell against Amazon. If Apple does not want to compete with Amazon that is there choice. There could only be a monopoly if that happened.
I fail to see what the side against what Apple did is. Especially when 5 of the large publishers settles with the DOJ.
Apple is a great company, every great companies make mistakes.
-QAMF
Amazon had cheaper pricing because of what they were charging Apple. There was no RETAIL LIST price standard and a WHOLESALE pricing model that's consistent.
Amazon was undercutting Apple tremendously as they had unfair pricing. What Apple suggested is to have a RETAIL LIST PRICE, a UNIFIED WHOLESALE cost and that Apple needed 30% because that's REASONABLE mark up. So, yes, in order for the publishers to make decent money they raised the RETAIL LIST price up in order to make an EQUAL playing field.
If you go to any retail store, they have a retail list price and a wholesale price. Unless the mfg has a discount structure for large resellers that buy bigger quantity, they usually charge the same wholesale cost. I know those that have little background in this have a tough time understanding what was going on, but I wouldn't call it unfair at all. It's just getting these guys to understand how to set their pricing structure so it's fair for the biggest download resellers, which is Apple and Amazon, among others. What they actually sell something for is different.
I think it's how the media, the judge and readers interpret this stuff since most of the people (media, judge and readers) don't comprehend this situation. I think they should have had a consistent pricing model to begin with but the publishers didn't get it and they didn't understand the digital download industry, much like the music industry didn't understand the digital download industry either at first.
LOL, he will be rewriting his CV by now.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Stevel
what a shameful act of injustice. If you can't beat them with innovation in the market place, and if you can't beat them with litigation in the courtroom, then go running to your President for the hope you paid him enough to do the deed. What about the price fixing Apple? You think Obama will help you out with that as well? Pathetic. Guaranteed to have some backlash with markets outside of the US.
Don't you just love these one post wonders. They drive by, deposit a giant, smelly turd on the carpet, and then just disappear.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Frood
In that sense it is a good overturn. If the general sentiment is true that it can start a 'tit for tat' war between nations and the ITC as well as generally promoting the notion that SEP patents are worth less than non SEP patents there's a danger there as there will be little incentive to pursue SEP
It is an ACCEPTED FACT by all SEP patent holders and SEP implementers that all SEP patents are worth far less than non-SEP patents for the following reasons:
1) Almost all SEP patent themselves were worthless prior to being incorporated into the standard and becoming SEP. This gives the SEP patent holders an economic incentive to pledge the patents for standardization (see #3 below).
2) To be accepted into the standard, the SEP patent holder must pledge FRAND terms. This action alone devalues the SEP patent to the extent that the SEP patent holder can no longer license SEP patents for more than FRAND rates.
3) The primary driver for patent holders to pledge patents to SEP was because the FRAND royalties they may capture from SEP patents can be far greater than the royalties they would capture if the patent wasn't part of the standards because of #1 above and because there are so many other non-infringing methods/technologies that makes the patent worthless on its own merits.
If Samsung thought so highly of its 3G wireless patents which are center of the ITC dispute and thought that it could get more than FRAND rates for these patents, it had the option NOT to pledge these patents to the standards and instead try to capture non-FRAND royalties for these patents. But of course it didn't precisely because the 3G wireless patents weren't worth that much on their own merits alone. So Samsung pledged these patents to SEP and agreed to charge only FRAND royalties.
The Presidential veto has, if anything, strengthened the SEP regime in the sense that those who think their patents are more valuable than what FRAND royalties would justify will not pledge their patents to the standards while those who think their patents are less valuable than what FRAND royalties would justify will be more than happy to pledge their patents to the standards and follow all the rules. in the end, the SEP abusers and trolls will voluntarily stay away from the standards process which is a GOOD THING.
I've been waiting for this decision one way or the other, and so has Apple.
Guess what? I think we get a notice of an upcoming product announcement within a week of this happening this Monday, so by August 12. First this is the correct decision, as the story states. Apple was waiting for this to shake out for two very good reasons. First, if they announced a product before this decison (or rather non-decision if not vetoed), it would be easy for intellectually dishonest people to advance this argument:
what is the harm - the product is or soon will be replaced.
Now this is not correct logic; principle is important. So they waited so as to not set in play future slippery slope type events. Secondly whether the product is banned or not most likely plays in to just what they plan to do with iPhone 4 availability in the USA. I think they should keep selling them. Anyone more than the most casual user will really need to replace far sooner than than if they were to buy something not about to become iOS Obsolete. Now the ultra casual user won't be bothered by this, they just wanted an iPhone, and the cheaper the better. When they eventually replace, they probably buy another "cheaper" iPhone.
Anyone other than an ultra casual user, (and some that start out that way don't stay that way - they dive deeper into the ecosystem) will want to replace sooner rather than later and will upgrade to if not the latest and greatest iPhone, something more upscale than iPhone 4 is currently in the Apple product line. Are they out anything? Not really. Cost zero on contract and sell the phone for now, close to $200 and whenever their sale date rolls around, probably a hundred bucks, and the phone goes to India or Brazil or whatever they do with them. I traded in an iPhone 4 just this week. It had been kicking around since October because of difficulty unlocking with AT&T, and then I got busy and just put it off for a while. I figured I better sell it before the product announcement, so I did. I was shocked what Amazon was willing to give me for something I was ready to toss out of frustration with unlocking.
Oh and speaking of conversion to Apple, that is me. I used to be an anything but Apple. Wife had an iPod, but her first iPhone was the iPhone 4 we just sold. I told her why not get the evo, or the galaxy whatever at that time. She was insistent. Needless to say 10 months later I got the 4S on release day, she got iPad for christmas, I bought one last summer, and got one for my father. Wife got her retina Mac Book Pro last summer too. Oh and I didn't tell you but I also traded the 4S at the same time as the 4. for an extra hundred bucks or whatever. Why did I trade that newish phone? Cause on release day last year this former anything but Apple bought 5 thats FIVE iPhone 5. Wife, myself, parents and brother. And that 4S, Well, I got back every penny I paid for it, plus the early termination fee when I sold it.
It will be an Apple world people, and this decision is the tip off to something exciting coming up.
TS asked a civil question and most AIrs in the know kindly answer.
I have asked some pretty rudimentary questions and one AI long-tooth answered my simple question so kindly I quickly forgot he was sometimes a might heavy with a few of my vacant points. The dude has standards yet was willing to help someone who needed a point to follow the discussion. I now see him in a totally different light, a more whole and complete person who does want honest discussion to take place at AI; and should he jump on one of my 'out of touch with reality' comments again, then, what the heck—we learn by our mistakes.
fixed dud to dude
I treated them like spam when I was a mod. We see a fair few more now than we did then.
That's part of the reason I never want dedicated forums (in the traditional Internet definition) to die. Imagine a world where our conversations here are in, say, WordPress or Vanilla or LiveFyre or any of those other idiotic cross-website comment services. :wow:
Hey, it's not a big deal. I'm chill about just about everything, or so I'm told. It's just that right here, in this specific instance, my desire to see the foundation of what this country represents upheld, my desire to see Apple succeed, and my interest in nothing other than absolute Truth slammed right together. There's a good quote; I forget what it's from. "My country right or wrong; if right, to be kept right, if wrong, to be set right." I wouldn't want Apple saved from anything they did wrong by my country going against its own laws and principles, and I wouldn't want Apple to win a court battle with lies.
Fortunately, neither of those happened here, and Apple should never have lost in the first place.
Thanks I have learned a lot reading your posts today, it all makes sense now.
President Obama raised the FRAND issue over a year ago. Then he was openly warning the patent courts and ITC how they needed to rule on FRAND patents. This decision was written in stone months ago.
Quote:
Originally Posted by lkrupp
I'm still unclear about what this is actually all about. So Samsung has a patent on something related to 3G GSM technology that Apple used in early versions of the iPhone and iPad. Did Apple refuse to pay royalties on this patent or did Samsung refuse to license it? Did Samsung offer to license to Apple but at rates far higher than other licensees were paying? Is this patent really subject to FRAND or not? Why has this gotten to this point? Who's really the bad guy here? Apple or Samsung?
The details have been fully explained multiple times in my previous posts on the topic. Here's the most recent explanation, which will answer all your questions:
http://forums.appleinsider.com/t/158812/senators-allude-support-for-presidential-veto-of-imminent-itc-iphone-and-ipad-ban#post_2371761
Quote:
Originally Posted by kharvel
Samsung offered license to Apple on non-FRAND terms. Specifically, Samsung demanded that Apple license non-SEP Apple patents to Samsung in exchange for Samsung licensing SEP patents to Apple on presumably FRAND terms.
No. Samsung did not "demand that Apple license non-SEP Apple patents". They did offer it as an option.
Quote:
President smacked down ITC for being an idiot and specifically said that it does matter what the terms were and those terms have to be FRAND.
While the letter emphasized a concern over FRAND, it also specifically noted that:
1) Bans over FRAND patents were still an option under certain circumstances (including the reason the ITC gave in its ruling, which was Apple's lack of negotiations):
2) They did not overturn the ITC decision itself.
So...... Clearly means something entirely different from your interpretation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Stevel
what a shameful act of injustice. If you can't beat them with innovation in the market place, and if you can't beat them with litigation in the courtroom, then go running to your President for the hope you paid him enough to do the deed. What about the price fixing Apple? You think Obama will help you out with that as well? Pathetic. Guaranteed to have some backlash with markets outside of the US.
The patents are both exhausted and FRAND. They should not be able to collect twice (both from the chip maker and from Apple). If they should be paid a second time it should be at the same rate others are charged as they are FRAND patents. So far Samsung has asked for 50x the normal rate they charge others in violation of Samsung's FRAND obligations.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Stevel
what a shameful act of injustice. If you can't beat them with innovation in the market place, and if you can't beat them with litigation in the courtroom, then go running to your President for the hope you paid him enough to do the deed. What about the price fixing Apple? You think Obama will help you out with that as well? Pathetic. Guaranteed to have some backlash with markets outside of the US.
There should be a script added to the site that goes something like:
IF number_of_posts EQ 1 AND TEXT_INCLUDES innovation THEN ban!!!!
Ha! That's remarkably similar to the code of some of the old spambots we got here. The code broke when we moved to Huddler, so their user page's biography fields were all full of "IS_HUMAN = 1; [" or something…
Ah, here we go.