Google’s recent letter to the IEEE about their position on the current lawsuits between Motorola Mobility and Apple seems to spark some outrage across the mobile land. And I’m puzzled.
First of all, I don’t think any specific company is innocent in this dance, starting with Apple themselves. In their letter to the ETSI, Apple stated (quoted):
Apple’s letter then moves on to propose a solution based on three specific principles: appropriate royalty rate; common royalty base; no injunction.
That’s a nice thought, but it’s making quick work of Apple’s recent attempts at obtaining various injunctions against its rivals in the recent past, most notably Samsung.
So what’s going on, here, now that the injunction course of action didn’t work for them, Apple thinks injunctions should be disallowed for everyone?
This whole patent war is ugly. Ugly, ugly, ugly. When Apple fired the first shot against Samsung in April 2011, the entire community seemed to be in wide agreement that this was a crazy move, one that could only lead to the mutually assured destructions of all the parties involved. Obviously, Apple had weighed these risks and they came to the conclusion that either they could afford the collateral or that this collateral would be very small anyway, since they thought that innovation was on their side.
As the events since April have shown, things are obviously not so clear cut and innovation seems to be spread quite evenly among all the parties involved. The result of Apple’s opening salvo has been a flurry of suits and counter suits which, frankly, have led nowhere. All the companies involved are poorer than before, their patent attorneys are much richer and the whole field is an intellectual property war zone.
In the letter mentioned above, Google is simply stating that they won’t change anything to the legal actions that Motorola Mobility had underway before Google acquired them. That’s it.
It makes as much sense getting upset about this as it is to be outraged at someone because they play chess viciously.
Now that the war is full on, I can’t find anything wrong with all the players trying to fight as much as they can and let the courts decide who’s right and who’s wrong. The only stupid move in this conflict would be not to play.
#1 by Jim O'Flaherty on February 9, 2012 - 10:23 am
Very well said!
Apple wanted it one way while it was obvious it was to their advantage. Now that Apple has felt some pain (lost battles, bad press, and an injunction or two) and realizes the absolute gargantuan number of companies aligned with Android who are now repositioning to be against Apple which will include an onslaught of new patent infringement litigation from this mass of entities, Apple realizes that regardless of their huge cache of cash, they can be litigated right out of that entire pile of money.
And thanks to Apple’s legal stupidity, they have enabled Microsoft to gain some power such as to become a threat to Apple’s smartphone and tablet markets, too, both through direct Win8 competitors (small) and Microsoft receiving Android royalties (large). And if B&N are able to get Microsoft pushed back into the anti-trust corner again using the Nokia collusion, and in time time lopping of Microsoft’s patent head with the US Feds back in an oversight role, the freed value will enable Android to become that much more powerful an IOS foe.
Apple made a strategic mistake. And now the multi-national megacorporation retaliation genie is out of the bottle. Apple’s just set themselves up to be the “this is what happens when you attempt to be legally aggressive and abusive with patents”. And honestly, from a Karma perspective, it couldn’t happen to a more deserving company.
Job’s unbelievably immature and irrational anti-Android ranting is coming back to haunt his precious Apple. Too bad he’s not here to see and experience the undesirable consequences of his legal temper tantrums.
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#2 by Jim O'Flaherty on February 9, 2012 - 11:17 am
Oops, in the second to last paragraph it should conclude with just=deserving, i.e. “…to a more _deserving_ company”.
Oh, and I posted a link to here with my response on my own blog, here:
http://chaotic3quilibrium.wordpress.com/2012/02/09/apples-hypocritical-crying-of-patent-abuse/
#3 by Chris Adamson on February 10, 2012 - 10:08 am
You’ve completely skipped over the issue that we’re talking about RAND / FRAND patents here — those that are essential to a technology to implement it at all, and that standards bodies insist be licensed to all parties on equal terms (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-discriminatory_licensing ). That’s different from the other patents these companies have been suing each other about.
I don’t think there’s much value in taking Apple vs. Samsung sides when the patents in question are slide-to-unlock and emoji. They’re both crap. But that’s a different realm of patents: you don’t *have* to have either to create a phone that can make calls and exchange data. Insisting on unconscionable terms for essential technologies is a different matter entirely. So, in equivocating Samsung’s behavior with Apple’s, you’ve fudged the facts a little.
#4 by Jesse on February 10, 2012 - 11:13 am
talking about “FRAND”, shouldn’t thin… shiny… rounded corners be considered FRAND type patents? These concepts have been around before Apple was even thought of. There were TVs that looked like this before the iPhone, Even tablets on TV shows from 30 years ago (in which Apple drew their inspiration). These are very much equivocal situations.
Push notifications are not essential patents… they just want to call it essential because now they are on the receiving end of the beat stick.