The issue here is that Samsung's patents are deemed essential to cell phone networking standards, so the law mandates that they be licensed under standard terms to prevent extortion (FRAND). However, slide-to-unlock and design language aren't interop. standards nor essential features of a phone (or, at least, they have not been declared to be, though I suspect they don't meet the bar) so the patent holders are free to set licensing fees as they wish. I suspect that Samsung would not hesitate to raise their licensing fees if the law allowed them to.
More biased propaganda from Groklaw. Hello, Slashdotters--welcome to HN!
It does seem kind of perverse that the essential, fundamental technologies on which the entire industry depends have to be licensed to all comers at bargain basement rates while at the same time latecomers can use fairly trivial UI and design patents to drive competitors' products out of the market.
Maybe this is the letter of the law but the reason so many of us are disappointed in Apple is that they're exploiting a broken system using tactics that for a long time have been precluded by gentlemen's agreement and common sense.
So while Samsung must license patents for difficult-to-design wireless hardware at extremely low prices to prevent extortion, Apple is free to extort from Samsung, with design language patents, all of their profits, all while taking advantage of the extremely-low FRAND terms? And this should be acceptable why?
I agree that Samsung would probably do the same thing if the law let them, which is why the law needs to not let them.
I think one reason that this legal brouhaha generates so much invective is because of a few fallacies about patents. At least, I think they're fallacies:
1) If a patent is easy to copy, it must have been easy to create. Samsung's 3G technology sounds hard to copy, so it must have been hard to create. Slide to unlock is easy to copy, so it must have been easy to create, right? The classic counter example is Viagra: formula is C22H30N6O4S. Easy to copy. But hard to create; clinical trials alone provably cost $100M, and billions of dollars were lost exploring other drugs which were failures. Similarly, I think slide-to-unlock is but the tip of the iceberg of Apple's expensive R&D machine; without the entire machine, it's hard to create, but easy to copy.
2) The value of the patent system is in the disclosures. People assume that because they didn't need to read a patent to recreate an invention, the patent is useless. But I would argue that the de facto value of the patent system is not the disclosures, it's the legal protections that allow the damn thing to be invented in the first place. If SmallCo is pondering whether to invest $100M to develop an innovation, and they know that DominantCo can quickly copy it for $1M, they won't proceed; they'll gave spent $100M for no benefit in the marketplace. Innovation suffers. Patents allow SmallCo to proceed with expensive investment by documenting the protected result. Similarly, if Apple couldn't protect their investments, we might all still be using BlackBerries.
Personally, I think the patent system should be modified so that the amount of protection is proportional to the monetary investment in the innovation--but that is hard to make game-proof.
I thought Groklaw was for information about legal proceedings, not speculation about companies' ability to compete in the market. MS isn't doing so hot, but it's pretty ridiculous to claim that Apple is doing this because they'd otherwise have some sort of trouble selling their devices.
The claim is that if Apple had to pay the sorts of royalties on Samsung's (and others') technology patents that Apple is asking Samsung to pay on Apple's patent on curved lines, Apple phones would be so expensive that they wouldn't sell like they currently do.
[+] [-] codex|13 years ago|reply
More biased propaganda from Groklaw. Hello, Slashdotters--welcome to HN!
[+] [-] cageface|13 years ago|reply
Maybe this is the letter of the law but the reason so many of us are disappointed in Apple is that they're exploiting a broken system using tactics that for a long time have been precluded by gentlemen's agreement and common sense.
[+] [-] clhodapp|13 years ago|reply
I agree that Samsung would probably do the same thing if the law let them, which is why the law needs to not let them.
[+] [-] felipeko|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] codex|13 years ago|reply
1) If a patent is easy to copy, it must have been easy to create. Samsung's 3G technology sounds hard to copy, so it must have been hard to create. Slide to unlock is easy to copy, so it must have been easy to create, right? The classic counter example is Viagra: formula is C22H30N6O4S. Easy to copy. But hard to create; clinical trials alone provably cost $100M, and billions of dollars were lost exploring other drugs which were failures. Similarly, I think slide-to-unlock is but the tip of the iceberg of Apple's expensive R&D machine; without the entire machine, it's hard to create, but easy to copy.
2) The value of the patent system is in the disclosures. People assume that because they didn't need to read a patent to recreate an invention, the patent is useless. But I would argue that the de facto value of the patent system is not the disclosures, it's the legal protections that allow the damn thing to be invented in the first place. If SmallCo is pondering whether to invest $100M to develop an innovation, and they know that DominantCo can quickly copy it for $1M, they won't proceed; they'll gave spent $100M for no benefit in the marketplace. Innovation suffers. Patents allow SmallCo to proceed with expensive investment by documenting the protected result. Similarly, if Apple couldn't protect their investments, we might all still be using BlackBerries.
Personally, I think the patent system should be modified so that the amount of protection is proportional to the monetary investment in the innovation--but that is hard to make game-proof.
[+] [-] codgercoder|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] moron|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ajscherer|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mvasilkov|13 years ago|reply