Groklaw nails it: "In other words, [Apple and Microsoft] want to disarm the companies that got there first, built the standards, and created the field, while the come-later types clean up on patents on things like slide to unlock or a tablet shape with rounded corners. Then the money flows to Apple and Microsoft, and away from Android - and isn't that really the point of all this, to destroy Android by hook or by crook? The parties who were in the mobile phone business years before Apple or Microsoft even thought about doing it thus get nothing much for their earlier issued patents that have become standards. Apple and Microsoft can't compete on an even field, because the patent system rewards the first to invent (or now, after the recent patent reform, the first to file). Neither Apple nor Microsoft got there first. Samsung
was there, since the '90s."
To illustrate: Apple is demanding $24 (!) per Samsung device for design patents, while at the same time, Apple also demands that Samsung does not charge more than $0.0049 per standards essential patent per device. This is absolutely, utterly, and entirely indefensible. And then Apple and its supporters have the nerve to claim Samsung is ripping
them off. Yes, this pisses me off, and no, that's not because it's Apple doing it (Microsoft is just as guilty). It's because this is plainly, utterly, clearly, and intrinsically
unfair.
Member since:
2011-08-08
For some reason, I can't imagine Google agreeing to pay MS and Apple said extortion royalties.
Microsoft and Apple are not criminal enterprises engaged in extortion. Since you apparently don't know what extortion actually is -- when you legally own something and require a fee be paid for its use, you are NOT committing extortion... Even when it ends with "or else".
If you're going to throw words around, at least make an effort to know what they mean.