Recent Posts
If you don't like it, just put up a mirror facing the camera and let Google reflect on that!You. are. awesome.-cranioscopical (August 01, 2012, 11:39 AM)-jgpaiva (August 01, 2012, 12:20 PM)
I've worked at a bunch of different places before finally ending up as bread-and-butter programmer, and those previous places definitely didn't have a lot of techie people. Yet, the people that used computers definitely did use file managers,-f0dder (August 01, 2012, 02:40 PM)
)Samsung, Apple, FRAND -- What's It All About? -- Samsung's Side Updated
Thursday, July 26 2012 @ 10:48 PM EDT
As Samsung and Apple have been fighting over patents from one end of the earth to the other, most of the coverage, with few exceptions, seems to present Apple's point of view. [Example A, Example B, Example C, Example D, and Example E.] We know how much money Apple is asking for, we know it's claiming treble damages for willfulness, we know it thinks FRAND patents are not deserving of injunction enforcement, and that Samsung is asking too much money for them.
But now that we have the redacted trial briefs from the parties, I thought you'd like to see Samsung's side. Litigation has two sides, two stories, not just one.
Did you know that Apple wants a royalty rate of $24 per unit from Samsung for its alleged use of Apple's design patent, the notorious tablet shape with rounded corners? $24! But when Samsung asked Apple for a much lower amount per unit that everybody else in the market pays for Samsung's standards patents, Apple refused, offered no counter-offer, and sued instead. To date, it's paid nothing at all for those patents or for the other regular patents Samsung is accusing Apple of infringing. In its trial brief, Apple states in one header:
To The Extent That Samsung Is Entitled To Any Remedy, its FRAND Damages Cannot Exceed $0.0049 Per Unit for Each Infringed Patent
Less than a penny should be Samsung's lot for patents that are essential to even be in the mobile phone business, but Apple wants Samsung to pay $24 for rounded corners, plus from $2.02 and up to $3.10 per unit for its utility patents.
Did you know that Samsung claims to have prior art that knocks Apple's patents out?
Samsung does not infringe any of Apple‘s patents and has located dead-on prior art that invalidates them.
It says it hasn't infringed them anyhow, but that they are, in any case, invalid.
The most important information is that we finally get to see what the FRAND issue is all about. It's the first time I actually understand the FRAND dispute. If I had to put it into a single sentence, it'd be this:
Companies who like to get patent royalties from competitors, like Apple and Microsoft, and who use patents aggressively, have noticed that if everyone who was in the mobile phone business before they were sues them over their patents, they won't be able to make a phone anyone can afford, so they want to get the courts to force folks like Samsung and Motorola to accept less than a penny per handset for their standards patents, while still charging the regular price for their own later-issued patents.
In other words, they 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:
That Samsung is able to offer such a wide variety of quality mobile telecommunications devices is no coincidence. Samsung has been researching and developing mobile telecommunications technology since at least as early as 1991 and invented much of the technology for today‘s smartphones. Indeed, Apple, which sold its first iPhone nearly twenty years after Samsung started developing mobile phone technology, could not have sold a single iPhone without the benefit of Samsung‘s patented technology. Even as Apple has carried out a coordinated campaign of dragging Samsung‘s name through the mud in this lawsuit and in the media, it has used Samsung‘s patented technology while flatly refusing to pay for its use.
"Coordinated campaign" -- do they mean Florian Mueller, by any chance? He certainly has put out endless streams of anti-Samsung articles. Whoever they mean, they believe it's coordinated by Apple, evidently.
If a party simply refuses to pay anything at all and refuses to negotiate, then what can the patent holder do? Nothing? Sue and wait for a decade to get paid, considering all the likely appeals? You could go out of business that way before you see any money.
And so rather than fixing the broken patent system, Apple would prefer to "reform" it in its own image of what would benefit Apple via the courts, telling them that what's reasonable is essentially nothing for these standards patents, so they end up winning due to playing on a field that tilts all their way. Apple in this litigation wants billions for its later patents, including penalties, but it wants to pay close to nothing for Samsung's, as if Samsung had donated their R&D to the world for nothing. I wish. But in reality, that's not how standards patents work currently.
Apple also wants a permanent injunction, while wanting to deny Samsung the right to even ask for one, so Samsung can't compete against it any more, although I notice that Apple's brief says that Samsung claims it can work around all of Apple's patents in a month. Did you know that? Me either. There is so much we haven't heard, I guess because of the coordinated campaign to spin it Apple's way.
Imagine the possibilities when used by those who talk to themselves
-rgdot (August 01, 2012, 08:25 AM)
300USD is pretty steep, but still it's 3USD/month for 7 years, which is what, 10 times better than the alternatives there?What's the catch?Yes, especially for the "free" version!-Renegade (July 27, 2012, 04:38 PM)-jgpaiva (July 28, 2012, 05:15 AM)But the single biggest catch I can see is simply waiting for it to be available in your locale.
- Connection speed is capped at "regular internet speeds" ("up to" 5mbs down/1Mbs up - but no indication of the lowest speed) on free version.
- $300 up front & non-refundable if you upgrade to the faster speed later on
- Lifetime guarantee = 7 year service commitment if Google decides to bail out
- Privacy. Everything you do online will be data mined by Google. Count on it.
- Bug Brother is watching you! As was alluded to earlier, don't even think of doing anything that may be illegal on Google's network. So bye-bye to "sharing" copyrighted media, ferquenting the warez torrents, hacker darknets, and many other things you may currently enjoy, depending on your personal tastes. And expect full behind the scenes "voluntary cooperation" with any government snooping requests regardless of any public hand wringing over it by Google.
-40hz (July 31, 2012, 04:42 PM)-jgpaiva (August 01, 2012, 03:34 AM)
Privacy: I agree, but I'm not sure if the others aren't doing the same.
What do you mean with "bug brother"? You think they'd be more strict than regular ISPs? Why?
I'm starting to agree with wraith808: looks like it's a market push, and they'll bail out if it doesn't work out well for them. At least the consumer is the only one who comes out winning, this time
So in short, their copious mound of freshly mined data is far to succulent a target for the alphabet soup crowd to pass up. Yes?-Stoic Joker (August 01, 2012, 07:06 AM)
Is it really protecting the innocent or just dividing the media into markets?-MilesAhead (July 31, 2012, 05:26 PM)
^^ At least the bunny is cute
And I wonder how much of this is to force other ISPs to follow suit. I think Google probably sees itself as limited by the limits ISPs put on their services. This way, they force them to be competitive, and after the market has changed, they bail if it isn't profitable enough or too much of a headache.-wraith808 (July 31, 2012, 05:15 PM)
It looks to me like Google (a) doesn't just provide a network port for bulk tapping; and (b) vets each request for info. That's not as good as taking a stand for what's right, but it's a heck of a lot better than we get from ATT, Verizon, etc.-CWuestefeld (July 31, 2012, 06:31 PM)
A lot of people complain about the "dirty routines" in comedy clubs. But when you think about it, it's job security. Your routine can't be shown on regular TV. Or if they show it with the bleeps, people will pay to see it done uncensored.-MilesAhead (July 31, 2012, 01:32 PM)
What's the catch?Yes, especially for the "free" version!-Renegade (July 27, 2012, 04:38 PM)-jgpaiva (July 28, 2012, 05:15 AM)
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beware of it being too usefulsomehow i don't think that's going to be my problem-mouser (July 28, 2012, 11:56 AM)
:P
The Mac App Store’s future of irrelevance
Postbox’s exit from the Mac App Store should sound very familiar to anyone who buys Mac software. If you read between the lines a bit, I think the real story there is one we’ve seen a lot since June 1: they tolerated the App Store’s lack of paid upgrade mechanics before, but sandboxing — and more accurately, needing to remove important app features because of their incompatibility with the current set of sandboxing entitlements — was the last straw.
How many good apps will be pulled from the App Store before Apple cares?
The problem with sandboxing isn’t that any particular app is incompatible with the current entitlements. It’s a deeper problem than that: Apple is significantly reducing the number of apps that can be sold in the Store after people have already bought them.
Apple’s stance seems to be pretty typical of them: comply with the new rules or leave. This usually works for them, but this time, they’ve made a critical strategic error: leaving is often a better option, or the only option, for the affected developers. Many of them have already left, and many more will.
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Next time I buy an app that’s available both in and out of the Store, I’ll probably choose to buy it directly from the vendor.
And nearly everyone who’s been burned by sandboxing exclusions — not just the affected apps’ developers, but all of their customers — will make the same choice with their future purchases. To most of these customers, the App Store is no longer a reliable place to buy software.
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The Mac App Store is in significant danger of becoming an irrelevant, low-traffic flea market where buyers rarely venture for serious purchases. And I bet that’s not what Apple had in mind at all.
