“Microsoft today issued a brief statement promising to make ‘essential patents’ available to competitors at fair and reasonable licensing rates, and promised not to sue companies making products that infringe these patents. The actual patents themselves weren’t disclosed, but Microsoft joins both Google and Apple in making recent statements on so-called fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory licensing terms. Such licensing terms designate certain patents as essential to complying with industry standards, making them available for licensing at (supposedly) lower-than-usual rates.” This industry is dysfunctional.
So you feel quite strongly about this Thom?
So why do you buy this Apple stuff?
Just now everyone is engaging in a patent war so if you followed that rule you would not be able to buy anything.
Also remember those child workers Apple/Samsung/HTC are abusing in China … you should stop buying their products for that reason.
Oh and while we are at it remember the environmental impact of all electronics. Don’t buy any that are not green.
Microsoft never gets tired of that colorful empty talk. The only fair and reasonable rate for software patents is no rate. They just need to be gone altogether.
Edited 2012-02-10 16:46 UTC
Apple has apparently refused to pay the royalty fees demanded by Motorola and Samsung, saying they are excessive for patents covered by FRAND obligations.
So apple is refusing to pay for patents they have been using since the very start, but is still allowed to sell their products. I hope they get nailed hard for this and end up getting fined severely.
FRAND doesn’t mean free as stated by all these articles, if you don’t want to pay for the patents under these terms then you should take the companies to court before hand, not just do what you want anyways then complain about the licensing costs.
The fact that the hardware they buy supports these features doesn’t automatically give a company license to use them. MPEG decoders for instance. Anyone can buy one of these chips, but you still have to pay license fees (for the codec) to include them in your products.
This is fair since all these companies paid lots of money on R&D. This is to help them recoupe costs while still allowing these technologies to exist out in the wild. If the pricing isn’t fair then there should have been a court case 5 years ago, maybe they are trying to gouge licensing price on Apple (doubtful). I wouldn’t blame them. Apple has made tons of money off the use of these patents.
You have no idea what your talking about. If every FRAND patent holder charged 2.5% of the cost of a device it would be impossible for anyone to make anything because the cost of the patents would exceed the cost of the device.
2.5% is not ‘fair and reasonable’, that’s what’s at issue here.
Actually this very much depends on the license between the patent holder the manufacturer.
Either the chips comes with a license or it doesn’t. The new case between Apple and Moto in the US is all about that.
Your argument is basically justifying virtually any patent predation by anyone including all patent trolls. Nice job!
Maybe Apple could start by only enforcing reasonable patents. Come on, rectangles cause products to be blocked from sale??? Slide to unlock is fin on my gate, but causes a product to be banned from sale.
Hey, Apple, the street goes both ways. Maybe if you would play nice, you wouldn’t get sued so much.
Good “make ‘essential patents’ available to competitors at fair and reasonable licensing rates”…. but where is the patent list?
I had seen this kind of efforts from Microsoft before. At the end we never know which patents can we use and which not.
It is confusing on purpose, because MS wants to reserve the right to sue or at least threat with patents.
You aren’t usually going to get a list. Having a list presents additional maintenance costs, and there’s no guarantee it would be complete even if maintained.
You’d get a blanket license to patents essential to implementing the standard solely for the purpose of implementing the standard. Usually there would be a document associated with the standard covering the licensing of relevant patents.
Any other such usage would have to be negotiated with the patent holder. In MS’ case, their point of contact is here: http://www.microsoft.com/about/legal/en/us/IntellectualProperty/IPL…
The problem this presents some people is that no reasonable person could not support the need for a FRAND framework, no reasonable person could support the way that Motorola is abusing the FRAND system and no reasonable person could defend Google’s weasel words on all this. But that would mean supporting Apple (and Microsoft) against Motorola and against Google and for some (for Thom I suspect) this proves impossible. So you get this vacuous little report that rather than saying what is the right and what is the wrong way to behave in relation to FRAND patents makes some pathetic statement about “the industry is dysfunctional’ – weasel words in my opinion which tries to skirt around the issue in order to avoid having to take sides.
Let’s be clear about some of the details here. Motorola licensed it’s patented technology to Qualcomm under the FRAND framework. Motorola did this voluntarily in order for its technology to be adopted as an industry standard. Qualcomm explicitly licensed the technology so it could incorporate it into components it would sell to third parties, cascading it’s FRAND patent license to it’s customers and end users in a wholly usual fashion. Many, many companies buy and use Qualcomm components. Now Motorola turns around and says Apple has infringed its FRAND patent by buying and using Qualcomm components and as result it should pay Motorola 2.5% of it’s revenues. This is an insane abuse of the FRAND system and if replicated across the industry would kill the development of standards. Just because this abuse is aimed at Apple does not stop it being an abuse.
I’m not arguing against the possible abuse going on here by Motorola/Google. That’s not what I’m saying at all.
I’m arguing against the ridiculous notion that crap software patents – the one Apple and Microsoft peddle – can be used to block competitors, while hardware patents, which are way more valuable and took a hell of a lot more time, effort, and money to develop, should just be handed over.
Apple and Microsoft are the ones that started this patent war. Now, when their victims are starting to fight back they start crying about patent abuse? Fcuk them. Seriously. If Apple and Microsoft hadn’t started this dirty, disgusting, anti-competitive war that’s threatening to destroy an entire industry and halt progress for years to come, then they would not have had to deal with increased FRAND costs at all.
Reap what you sow. I want the entire system to explode. Let Motorola and other FRAND patent holders use these patents to cripple Apple and Microsoft. I am against any form of violence, but if someone attacks me, I’m not just going to sit back and take it – I’m going to punch and kick them back.
If you start a fight, don’t start crying when your victims start fighting back.
The tricky question of who fired first. Who landed the first blow. Who started the war and when.
Google started the war with Apple.
Google escalated the war with Microsoft after Microsoft decided to compete with Google’s core product
Google decided to attack Microsoft’s and Apple’s business model by using it’s large search related advertising revenues to offer a free alternative to both companies products. Google attacked Microsoft and Apple. Microsoft had already decided to try to compete directly with Google’s core business but Apple sought out an alliance with Google and had baked Google services directly into iOS and the iPhone from day one as well as inviting the Google CEO onto it’s Board. Apple did not attack Google or try to compete with Google prior to Android. Never the less, Google decided to attack Apple’s business model by offering a reasonably good clone of iOS to OEMs. A clone built using other people’s code without proper permission (and no – a blog entry is not proper permission) and when the need for a license is discussed decided not to bother (the Lindholm email).
Microsoft countered by defending it’s core business model – software license fees – by seeking patent licences from Android OEMs. Given the number of OEM’s who quickly agreed to pay licences one must presume that Microsoft had a legally compelling case.
Apple’s response is not the same as Microsoft’s as the business model is different. What Apple wants to deter, if it can, is the wholesale cloning of it’s products made possible by Google’s Android. Company’s like Samsung have tried to copy Apple products (and denying that is simple ludicrous) and Android has allowed many bits of iOS to be copied by several OEMs. Apple’s aim is, through a war of legal attrition, to try to deter the most blatant copying and to reduce the scale of copying.
Now Android OEMs (including one about to be owned by Google) have decided to abuse the FRAND system in order to seek a tactical advantage in a war with Apple which Google started. If the FRAND system were to rupture it would disrupt technical innovation and undermine the setting of universal standards.
And you think this is OK. You want Microsoft and Apple ‘crippled’ through the abuse of FRAND patents. iPhobia and Google worship slides into nihilistic technophobia. Shame on you.
Google has hypnotised many geeks and techies through cheap free trinkets (nice trinkets but still just trinkets) and endless duplicitous lies about being ‘open” whilst actually repeatedly attacking those that innovate (Yelp, Skyhook, Groupon,Twitter, Facebook, Apple) repeatedly undermining the business models of many tech companies.
Google started this war but tries to fight it through proxies whilst holding up it freshly washed clean hands for all to see. Google started this war. To sell advertising.
Wait – let me get this straight. You’re not allowed to compete with Apple and Microsoft? Are you serious? Do you honestly believe this? If you try to compete with the Old Boys’ Network of Technology (Jobs-Elisson-Gates), you should expect to be patent trolled?
I… I am speechless. Utterly speechless. This is the biggest piece of tripe I have ever heard in my entire life. It’s borderline delusional. It’s so incredibly arrogant I just don’t know what to say.
Please don’t put words in my mouth. I said that Google broke its alliance with Apple and then attacked Apple’s iPhone business not with a competing Google product but with a free offering to Apple’s hardware competitors in a way designed to undermine Apple’s business even though Apple was not a competitor of Google’s. Google is absolutely free to do that. That’s business.
But please don’t pretend, as you did, that this sequence of events began with an attack by Apple on Google or on Android. Google broke it’s alliance with Apple, changed Android to look like iOS, explicitly attacked both Apple and Steve Jobs in the the strongest fashion in public at it’s IO event and stood by as Android OEMs copied Apple’s hardware design. Again all legitimate business actions.
Apple’s response, which has been to defend it’s IP (and not by the the way to attack Google in public or by removing Google’s services from it’s iOS devices), is also perfectly legitimate and not some sort of vicious, unprovoked and illegitimate attack as you present it.
I return to my main point. Even if one thinks that Apple was wholly in the wrong in it’s legal actions, using FRAND to attack them is destructive and abusive and should not be supported, cordoned or celebrated. End of story.
Alliances can be broken. Tough luck. Alliances are broken all the time. Especially in business.
Apple and Microsoft are destroying the technology industry with their patent trolling. They are legitimising patents even more than they already were. There was a relative balance in the technology industry regarding patents, which made it possible for small companies to rise to the top and challenge the status quo – see Facebook. See Google. See countless others.
Thanks to the anti-competitive practices by Apple and Microsoft, this is no longer possible. If yuo get too big, they’ll just sue you. As a growing company, you won’t have the means to defend yourself. This is a direct attack on the technological progress of mankind.
As a geek and technology enthusiast, I see this as a crime. Any sane society would have Apple and Microsoft strung up from the highest tree. Ballmer, Jobs, Ellison, Cook, the whole lot – criminals who ought to be held accountable for the damage their patent trolling is doing to this once great industry.
Edited 2012-02-11 18:23 UTC
Thom Holwerda,
“As a geek and technology enthusiast, I see this as a crime. Any sane society would have Apple and Microsoft strung up from the highest tree. Ballmer, Jobs, Ellison, Cook, the whole lot – criminals who ought to be held accountable for the damage their patent trolling is doing to this once great industry.”
At the *very least* they should be prohibited from doing it going forward instead of continuing this BS through the next generation. Realistically though, they control nearly everything, they own the industry, they own the government, they’re accountable only to themselves. Just because they deserve to be strung up for the harm they’ve caused doesn’t mean it’s going to happen.
We must institute a separation between corporations and state in order to clean up the corrupt practices which are so commonplace today. However corporate entitlements are so great that they may be genuinely delusional enough to think that their interests are more important than the rest of us.
“a separation between corporations and state” thanks for the expression, I’ll remember that one
(what’s the long term difference between corporations – especially of the kind depicted at their extreme in Syndicate Wars – and churches, anyway? …and isn’t the Catholic Church essentially the largest long-lived one of both? ;p )
But you know what I’d also point out …corps are made out of people in the populace, and among their biggest shareholders are also people (via bank savings, retirement funds, etc.), demanding maximum returns.
Sweet teenage girls won’t give up regularly getting their nice cheap clothes and such, no matter if you show them a documentary in what conditions those trinkets are made (I actually verified this empirically, on few local examples – curiously, two even “very spiritual, religious, community-oriented, caring, volunteering”, I’m sure you know the drill)
How ironic your statement is.
The biggest threat to innovation in the tech industry is not software patents, the current phase of multiple legal actions will pass and it’s effects will be trivial, the biggest threat to innovation is Google. This is because any development that creates a new space or a new way to use the internet, and which therefore creates new user activity data, is seen by Google as a threat unless it is given unfettered access to that user data.
Hence Googles degrading of it’s own search results in order to deliberately downgrade Twitter and Facebook results. Hence it’s attempt to counter any new net innovation with one of it’s own free services in order to destroy the business model of others, hence it’s move to buy hundreds of new start ups before they have a chance to really develop lest their work leads to any activity that Google does not control.
This desire to access all, control all, copy all is intrinsic to Googles business model and it has and will become more desperate and explicit and aggressive in it’s actions as the decline of desktop internet usage and the rise of mobile internet usage continues as that will erode Google’s business model.
Tony Swash,
Quit being partisan and just admit they’re both threats against freedoms. Software patents strip us of our intellectual right to use and sell our own software implementations. Instead they entitle corporations to software monopolies and make us buy licenses for nothing tangible in return except for protection from being sued. They’re not helpful or wanted. On the hardware front, we are loosing access to our own paid-for hardware because of walled gardens designed to vendor-lock and restrict our choices. This is a significant set-back for innovation.
You might be inclined to side against one corp or another due to personal bias, but the fact is none of the big players are without blame here. The entire industry is operating in disarray with more effort going to keeping the status quo than to actually innovating anything.
Lucky for those companies and people society has moved past the “string up” phase.
You spread a lot of hatred against Apple, Microsoft and its customers. No doubt you’d like them tortured and strung up too, yet all of Google’s evil doing is explained like some valiant effort to fight back.
What Apple did wrong was trust Google and Eric. Google’s arrogance makes them think they can screw everyone over, including their partners, own users and any startup company that seems to be going somewhere.
Your just using this argument to justify your bias.
Patents are bad, period. The use of FRAND patents to control a market is fucking disastrous to a whole industry.
Fortunately, the EU is a bit more rational …
European Union Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia announced plans to “use antitrust powers to prevent patents from being used to unfairly control market share, including in ongoing investigations,”
Seriously. Patents that are included in a standard ought to be licensed at reasonably cost, and yes, that menas lower than non essential patents. Interoperability depends on it. If not, we would have a multitude of wireless standards, each using their own techniques, and all incompatible with each other. And why should the license depend on the price of the product in question?
By getting a patent included in a standard, the patent holder is basically being guaranteed an income because pretty much all phone makers will be providing phones using the patent in question.
And why isn’t there a proper patent pool with a single licensing fee, like exists for h264. It undermines a patent pool if every company has to negotiate its own patent licensing costs. How can Apple (or any other company) prove that Motorola’s terms are not discriminatory if it cannot know what terms are offered to others as these agreements are invariably confidential and secret?