darelrex

It was inevitable that somewhere, some day, a government was going to demand such immense fines, and such massive, "antitrust" changes to Apple's products, that Apple would have to bow out of that market until/unless things become viable again. Not sure if this is that breaking point, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if it was.

NFC is just a standardized short-range wireless protocol for a mobile device to communicate with a point-of-sale terminal. There is nothing in the NFC standard that requires any particular mobile device to participate in any particular bank, credit card, digital wallet, third-party app, or whatever. Apple is just using NFC the way it wants to: Not long ago, iPhones didn't even have NFC hardware at all. Apple added NFC hardware to iPhone specifically to support Apple Pay and for no other reason. Does that create a positive obligation that Apple let other companies use it any way they want to, and does that logic apply also to the FaceID scanner, the camera, the microphone, the GPS chip, the Secure Enclave, etc.? Believe it or not, the EU's competition authorities have actually suggested that it does.

Apple in its turn has sued Ericsson over what it describes as "standards-essential patents."

All patents contained in the 5G phone standard (or 4G before it, etc.) are standards-essential. Nobody is supposed to need permission to use them. Nobody is supposed to need to sign licensing agreements to use them. Nobody is supposed to be able to get product-sale injunctions against people who use them, even while wrangling over money in court.

The only valid dispute is how much do they have to pay. And that's supposed to be the exact same (per-device) amount that everyone else is paying for those same patent(s). If no such amount exists (because the patent holder isn't following the rules of the FRAND agreement), then the amount owed should be zero.

It's stunning that phone communication standards — without which you can't make a working phone at all, and your whole company could collapse if your most successful product is suddenly unavailable for purchase — can be used in court to try to extort any amount from any phone maker. Hopefully, Apple got a good deal in this settlement, based on the strength of its case against Ericsson and the actual content of the FRAND agreement Ericsson long-ago signed.

caskey said:

This is a total overreach. Would it be fair, for example, to force Square to allow other credit card processors like PayPal or Shopify’s software to use the Square credit card reader with their apps? There has to be a line drawn somewhere. Just because it’s popular to bash big tech does not mean it’s legal in this free market economy. 

I agree with your comment generally, but I would like to point out: Actually, for a long time the Square credit card swipe dongle could be theoretically used by anyone. It was just a coil of wire, and when you ran the magnetic strip by it, it induced a current in the wire that could be read by the iPhone's analog audio input that was part of the mini headphone jack. That's why Square could give those swipers away for free: they were incredibly cheap.

Now that iPhone doesn't have an analog jack, the new swiper connects to the Lightning port, and I don't think it's quite so cheap anymore. (And not sure if anyone but Square can use it now.)

I can't wait to see what happens when Apple get's fined 10% of its worldwide revenue over this. FYI, that's €35 billion ($37 billion), enough to buy more than seven of Apple's new spaceship ring campuses. And that's potentially just the first fine of many. Any chance at all Apple's going to pay that kind of money?

Vestager et al. have been spewing this bluster for years now. They need to stop flapping their yappers and start dishing out the giga-fines, to Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Facebook. Show all those mean companies who's boss.