

Obama and the Smartphone Wars - palebluedot
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903327904576526130093390612.html

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yock
The article states overtly that patent infringement is near unavoidable in
smartphone manufacturing, but then proceeds to paint a picture of unilateral
patent infringement on Google's part vs. Apple. I know the author intended to
focus on one patent disagreement, but it's disingenuous to focus on Google as
an infringer and Apple as a victim whilst ignoring that the opposite is at
least possible.

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fpgeek
Given Google's recent patent acquisition sprees (IBM and now Motorola), I
think the opposite is getting more likely every day.

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hugh3
_But another peculiarity of the ITC is that its rulings can be waived by the
president. Verizon thinks it would be great if President Obama, in a blanket
statement, made clear he would not let stand any decision blocking importation
of consumer wireless devices._

Is there any precedent for a President doing this?

It doesn't seem wise either from a political or from a good-governance point
of view for the President to wade in and overrule decisions made by other
bodies.

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Locke1689
Well the thing about the ITC is that one of its stated responsibilities is to
advise the President on international trade. This strongly implies that the
purpose of the ITC is to serve the President's (and executive branch's)
decisions in international trade. Knowing this, it really doesn't seem that
unusual or improper for the President to intervene on the ITC's behalf.

Aside: to almost everyone else in this thread, don't focus on the Apple vs.
Google aspect of this story or the specific patent claims. While perhaps a
worthwhile topic (one I probably think has been discussed to death) this story
is not fundamentally about that.

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Justin_lumba
Apple is giving its mobile OS away for free too (they previously used to
charge some users to download new versions). Apple is "monetizing its software
inventions" with high hardware margins.

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philipkimmey
The ITC is an interesting place for this to end up.

I once was in a class where an ITC commissioner (or something like that) came
and talked about the ITC's role in international trade.

My limited understanding is that they typically are somewhat of a domestic
alternative/pre-cursor to WTO type disputes. For example, the two cases I
heard about were both antidumping cases: one about chicken products and one
about bedroom furniture.

How's that for a random and mostly irrelevant contribution?

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DanielBMarkham
I think the author has convinced me: Obama should throw this thing back to the
courts. Having an administrative panel decide on issues of this importance is
not in the national interest. The courts can decide what the law says. If the
law is whacked (it is), then the legislative body can fix it. That's the way
things are supposed to work. Using a part of the executive branch to impact
huge areas of IP law was never intended by the folks who set up the system.

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count
How is it that Apple is the dominant player? They make the most money, sure,
but they are far from the #1 unit shipper. They've only had a phone on the
market for ~4-5 years at that!

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nkassis
It's interesting that the president has the ability to waive ITC imporation
bans. But the author calling the patents Apple is using to sue "Inventions" is
a little bit far fetched.

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fpgeek
More than a little. I'm beating my favorite patent drum again, but one of
Apple's alleged "inventions" (that amazingly survived first-round review at
the ITC) is this:

<http://www.google.com> (i.e. recognizing things like URLs in free-form text
and turning them into clickable actions).

Prior art for this includes such obscure pieces of software as Netscape
Navigator 2 ("live" URLs in mail and newsgroup messages), released months
before Apple filed for this patent.

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mousa
It seems like conservatives are growing more and more anti-Google.

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wollongong
I thought 'conservatives' and Murdochs Wall Street Journal hated "big
government" and government intervention? But if it's in the interest of
protecting corporate monopolies and profits they like it? How about some more
tax payer subsidized bailouts to failed corporations while we're at it?

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hugh3
This is the kind of comment that isn't helpful.

I really have no idea why you're assigning one columnist's opinion to
"conservatives" in general, nor charging hypocrisy based on one rather
carefully-reasoned opinion that maybe one arm of the Government should
overrule the decisions of another arm of the Government. And I'm _especially_
not sure why you think it's all about 'protecting corporate monopolies' when
such a decision, if made, would merely be taking the side of one huge company
against another huge company, and furthermore on the anti-monopolistic side.

I suspect, therefore, that you may be letting preexisting political opinions
cloud your judgement.

