

How Apple and Microsoft intend to destroy Android - mtgx
http://osnews.com/story/26229/How_Apple_and_Microsoft_intend_to_destroy_Android

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codex
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!

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cageface
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.

~~~
Rhymenocerus
What infuriates me is the lack of outrage by all the hipsters who hold
everyone else to such a high standard. The same people who are still trying to
drag Bill Gates through the mud for his business tactics in the 90's are dead
silent about their favorite company employing methods that are at least as
outrageous.

Whether you're an Apple guru or not, everyone loses when there's no
competition in the market. It seems like the ultimate irony for the "Think
Different" company to be acting like this. Still, I am Jack's complete lack of
surprise.

~~~
gnaffle
It could be argued that Apple is acting within the legal system, whereas Bill
Gates and Microsoft were convicted and settled numerous lawsuits.

And while I disagree with the patent suits, I'd have preferred that the
competition found ways to make smartphones that _didn't_ infringe of any of
those patents, and made an even better product because of it. (For instance, a
phone with facial recognition doesn't need slide to unlock).

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codex
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.

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codgercoder
the whole situation is a counter-example to first mover advantage

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moron
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.

~~~
ajscherer
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.

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mvasilkov
I wish them luck. No, really.

