carnegie

B-Mc-C said:

Is that a thing now – the government “participating” or intervening in civil cases between two private parties? Merrick Garland has crossed the line. Such an abuse of power. If you hate Apple, sue them yourselves.

Yes, it's a thing.

It's been a thing for a long time. Interested amici can, under federal rules of appellate procedure (or U.S. Supreme Court rules), ask for permission to participate in oral arguments. It's much more common for amici to just file briefs with appellate courts, but they sometimes ask for and are sometimes granted permission to participate in oral arguments even though they aren't otherwise parties in the cases being argued. The federal government in particular often files amicus briefs and sometimes asks to participate in oral arguments. This can happen for various reasons but, notably, it often happens when interpretations of federal law and how it should be applied are at issue. Such is the case in Epic v Apple. Antitrust cases, even between private parties, typically involve the kinds of issues which the federal government is inclined to weigh in on.

This isn't something new. This happened under the last administration as well as previous administrations.

The reason for the timing of these sales is pretty clear. The shares were sold when the share price climbed back above the share price at their vesting.

In recent years Mr. Maestri has routinely sold newly vested shares shortly after their vesting (e.g., not the day after vesting but a few days or weeks later). But he doesn't sell them at a share price lower than the vesting price (i.e., the cost basis). This is true of his time-based shares which vest every April and his performance-based shares which vest every October. He receives the shares, minus the 50+% which is withheld for tax purposes, and then sells all of them shortly thereafter if the share price hasn't gone down. In this case the share price started to drop shortly after these shares vested and didn't get back to the vesting price until the day they were sold, more than 4 months later.

Google's PR campaign with regard to RCS is pretty disingenuous. I'd liken it to a car salesman who, when touting a particular car model, refers to the features and power of a more expensive trim package with a larger engine and refers to the price and fuel efficiency of a less expensive trim package with a smaller engine, all while obscuring the reality that they're referring to different versions of the car - i.e., you can't get all that they're trying to sell you on. You either get the power and the bells and whistles, or you get the fuel efficiency and the lower cost.

To get the important benefits that RCS offers over SMS, you really have to be using Google's version of it - not some industry standard version that Apple just has to agree to use. For Apple's part, I can understand it saying... no thanks. And for my part, I definitely say... no thanks. I don't want Apple changing the way my iPhone's messaging works such that the text messages I send are - even as a fallback - going through Google's servers. If Apple did that, I'd consider it an abandonment of my interests. It's not what I expect when I buy an iPhone.

Google isn't trying to PR-war Apple into adopting an industry standard that will allow for better interoperability. It's trying to PR-war Apple into adopting Google's way of doing things so that Google is in a better competitive position and so that Google's a little more involved in the lives and tech of iOS users - whether they want it to be or not. That's fine, Google can seek that. But (1) it should be more honest about what it's asking for and (2) it's hard to fault Apple for refusing to go along.

As for the green bubble versus blue bubble issue: I get the negative impacts that the obvious visual cue may have on some. But green bubbles don't mean Android user, they mean SMS. There are reasons why iOS users (and Android users, for that matter) would want to know - through clear visual cues - that the messages they are sending or receiving are being delivered through SMS rather than, e.g., through Apple's iMessage service. I wouldn't want to lose that visual cue even if the fallback were RCS rather than SMS.

bloggerblog said:

Sounds like Apple wants the opportunity to prove Qualcomm's patents are not original and therefore invalid. So that when 2025 comes around Qualcomm won't jump back on the lawsuit wagon. Sounds like a valid concern to me.

That's correct. The point here is that the patents in question are set to outlive the settlement agreement. Apple wanted an agreement from Qualcomm that it wouldn't sue in the future based on these patents. In return Apple would have agreed, in effect, to drop its PTAB challenges to the patents' validity. Qualcomm wouldn't agree so Apple maintained the right to continue the challenges.

It's a question that should probably be answered at some point: Basically, does a licensee have standing to challenge the validity of patents which will still be active, and based on which they might still be sued, after the expiration of an existing licensing agreement? (Or, under what circumstances do they have such standing?) That's why several parties field amicus briefs asking the Supreme Court to grant cert and consider the issue. It apparently just wasn't, in the eyes of enough justices, a big enough unresolved issue for the Court to take up the matter at this time.