FileMakerFeller

chutzpah said:

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.  

Why?  Them being essential is what means that Apple has used them and needs to pay licensing fees.

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.

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.

spheric said:

22july2013 said:

spheric said:

rob53 said:

Why does everything have to interoperate? I buy Apple products. I don’t buy Google things. I made a choice to buy Apple-only products. What business does the EU have telling me I have to use, or allow to use, other products? What product has the EU improved? None that I know of. They’re just doing a huge money grab. 

The point is that it's YOUR CHOICE that keeps you buying Apple products, and the quality of THEIR products. 

Not the fact that they make it extremely difficult to choose a different manufacturer's product, even if their products progressively go to shit, because they make it impossible to export the data you've sunk into their services and use it on any other brand's devices. 

Because at that point, you don't have a choice but to keep buying their products. 

You have to realise that this doesn't apply just to Apple — it applies to ANY manufacturer who might invest less and less into building shittier and shittier products, while holding their customers hostage. 

Okay, so why not force all car manufacturers to be compatible with each other, like using compatible infotainment systems, compatible tires, and compatible engines? Do you like to be consistent? Just asking.

Because no car on this planet offers storage for ANYTHING of yours that you cannot readily and easily remove and place in another car. 

Any data you put in is either synched from your phone or on physical media/devices — and removed once you take the phone or the USB stick or the CD or whatever with you. Any possession you bring into the car can be taken out and placed in any other car, built by any other manufacturer on the planet. 

This is NOT about components of the device. This is about what YOU bring into the device — YOUR DATA. 

This legislature isn't forcing anyone to allow other manufacturers' engines, but about letting you actually take your luggage, your umbrella, and your phone back out of the car when you want to use a different car. 

Incidentally, every tire I've ever bought would have worked on other brands' cars, as well, and every infotainment system I've used offered to work with regular radio stations and when it allowed me to connect my phone or iPod, I could still just take them with me when I left the car, and use them just like that in other manufacturers' cars, any time I wanted to. 

[emphasis added]

That is insightful, and a wonderful summary.

Yeah, I think they'll have a tough sell on this one. The former CFO? That's a role with responsibility for financial irregularities like the company's insolvency. Nobody's going to forget that debacle for a while.

In Australia, "interest-free" schemes make their money by charging a fixed monthly fee for the duration of the loan. Technically, since it's a flat fee not correlated to the loan amount it doesn't count as interest - but that's a semantic difference, since it's possible to compare the amount of the monthly fee to the amount being borrowed to pay for the goods. And what do you know, if the loan isn't paid off according to schedule there's an interest rate charged that's basically the same as any other credit card but it gets back-dated to the start date of the loan.

This might mean Apple sees a dip in sales in Canada, but the upside is that people who can't afford to spend the money now have one less way to fool themselves into spending more than they should.

AppleInsider said:

Signed by over 80 civil society organizations and academics, the group believes "The UK could become the first liberal democracy to require the routine scanning of people's private chat messages, including chats that are secured by end-to-end encryption" if the bill becomes law. 

Wasn't the UK also the first liberal democracy to adopt the widespread use of video surveillance of public spaces? I doubt this argument will sway the thinking of the powers that be. The legal framework is such that the state grants rights to the citizens rather than the citizens grant rights to the state (which was the original purpose of the US constitution).