HTC Patents Challenged by Apple Probably Valid, Judge Say

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lchiu7

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#109004 11-Sep-2012 10:22

I'll stick this in the Android forum since HTC is Android and there another thread about Apple going after Samsung in this forum.

This is a very interesting development about 4G technology that Apple is using in the Ip0ad 3 and new iPhone that HTC is challenging. Could lead to a ban in the US for those devices.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-09-06/htc-patents-challenged-by-apple-probably-valid-judge-say

Time for some turkey talking I guess. Maybe HTC could talk to Samsung about cooperating :-)

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billgates

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#684252 11-Sep-2012 10:32

Apple and HTC have both confirmed settlement talks and negotiations are under way. This is no way helps Samsung or any other Android OEM at all except for HTC.

Do whatever you want to do man.

lchiu7

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#684275 11-Sep-2012 11:15

billgates: Apple and HTC have both confirmed settlement talks and negotiations are under way. This is no way helps Samsung or any other Android OEM at all except for HTC.

I guess you didn't see my smiley at the end of that comment.

In seriousness though, it looks like Samsung will do the same

http://gizmodo.com/5941957/samsung-will-reportedly-sue-apple-over-a-4g-lte-iphone-5

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billgates

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#684306 11-Sep-2012 11:58

There is a big difference though. Samsung's LTE patents are covered under FRAND. They cannot force settlement to Apple via these patents. They have to be licensed regardless under a fair licensing deal else Apple can sue Samsung for anti competitive behavior which both Microsoft and Apple have taken Motorola to European courts for. Motorola is under anti trust investigation now in EU for abusing their patents under FRAND.

Apple's patents are not covered under FRAND.

Do whatever you want to do man.

lchiu7

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#684320 11-Sep-2012 12:21

Well I'm not a lawyer so cannot comment on that but I am sure Samsung has lots of patent attorneys and are likely to understand those issues well but still are going to pursue legal action.

Watch this space I guess.

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Ragnor

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#685055 12-Sep-2012 16:21

Cross licensing agreements between big players in the mobile industry are inevitable, you see in pc hardware (intel, amd, nvidia) and the auto industry... the problem is this prevents new entrants without large patent portfolio's from entering the market as the big guys can clobber them with lawyers.

The current US/world patent system is broken.

tdgeek

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#685079 12-Sep-2012 16:37

billgates: Apple and HTC have both confirmed settlement talks and negotiations are under way. This is no way helps Samsung or any other Android OEM at all except for HTC.

Wow. Seems HTC and Apple are talking, Google and Apple are talking, but according to the other article, Samsung may possibly move away from Android, and Google move away from Samsung. This strikes me that opposing companies can talk over issues in the hotbed smartphone market, but is it that Samsung is stubborn and isolating itself? While the merits of the case are in doubt, which I agree, and I am Apple, it was clear that Samsung were blatant and intentful, but that, and this news may seem to bear out Samsungs stubborn management.

While I continue to be harrassed by you Androiders, it would be a great pity if the Galaxy series ceased. Ask any non IT member of the public to name 10 smartphones, many would only say Galaxy and iPhone. Galaxy is big. I say the above as an interested IT user, not an Apple user.

blair003

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#685243 12-Sep-2012 22:37

I think you might be reading a bit too much into that article.

Both players are distancing themselves from each other a bit, that is clear. But that was clear after the verdict.. the main quote in that article from Google is from immediately after the verdict.

[edit - I now notice this article is from a couple of weeks ago when verdict was new]

I dont think samsung is moving to Windows Phone's because of this, they were already making windows phone devices AFAIK. Remember these are both big, listed companies. Samsung need to point out that they are not totally reliant upon android and google need to do the same with Samsung.

Neither want to lose the other, and I don't see either dropping the other anytime soon. But I would say that samsung has more to lose than google if they were to drop each other.

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blair003

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#685244 12-Sep-2012 22:41

billgates: There is a big difference though. Samsung's LTE patents are covered under FRAND. They cannot force settlement to Apple via these patents. They have to be licensed regardless under a fair licensing deal else Apple can sue Samsung for anti competitive behavior which both Microsoft and Apple have taken Motorola to European courts for. Motorola is under anti trust investigation now in EU for abusing their patents under FRAND.

Apple's patents are not covered under FRAND.

Are we sure that the LTE patents in question are covered under FRAND? I had thought that while basic 3G patents were covered, but some of the LTE stuff was not required for inter connectivity in the same way and therefore may not be subject to FRAND.

If it is clear that they are covered under FRAND, why would they sue over them? There must be some uncertainty to make the threat credible.

tdgeek

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#685249 12-Sep-2012 22:57

blair003: I think you might be reading a bit too much into that article.

Both players are distancing themselves from each other a bit, that is clear. But that was clear after the verdict.. the main quote in that article from Google is from immediately after the verdict.

[edit - I now notice this article is from a couple of weeks ago when verdict was new]

I dont think samsung is moving to Windows Phone's because of this, they were already making windows phone devices AFAIK. Remember these are both big, listed companies. Samsung need to point out that they are not totally reliant upon android and google need to do the same with Samsung.

Neither want to lose the other, and I don't see either dropping the other anytime soon. But I would say that samsung has more to lose than google if they were to drop each other.

I may well be. The article seemed well written, not displaying any bias, and I guess to me it seemed plausible given the case. I am Apple but I don't buy into it with bias. Such things as Google telling Samsung not to for example, makes me feel that Samsung's management may be a bit unpredictable.

Re LTE, I don't know a lot of detail. 3G is FRAND as it is a standard, so I would have thought that LTE would fall into that camp also. If it was sue-able, why did nothing happen with the iPad3? Seems bit tit for tat to me. Samsung is a great company for sure, and the Galaxy series are really nice phones, but the management doesn't seem to be professional at all. Don't take that as an Apple fan-based comment, but I've never seen this type of behaviour at CEO level before. Least of which from a market leader like them

blair003

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#685253 12-Sep-2012 23:13

I don't know much about their management, or Samsung as a company for that matter. But it would be surprising for a seemingly successful company that size to not have good leadership. You would think (or hope) the guy running the show has some talents that got him to that position.

I don't know if the patent case against them proves anything against their leadership/strategy. I don't have sources off hand and I could be wrong but from I recall the electronics division basically doubled their value in the last few years largely as result of the Galaxy series, so even after they pay out the $1bn and lose a few pc off their share price for the verdict, so far you can't really fault them that much on that front

(obviously you can fault them, but I mean in terms of how the company is positioned now compared to a few years ago.. of course if a bunch of their devices get banned it may be a different story)

tdgeek

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#685260 12-Sep-2012 23:45

blair003: I don't know much about their management, or Samsung as a company for that matter. But it would be surprising for a seemingly successful company that size to not have good leadership. You would think (or hope) the guy running the show has some talents that got him to that position.

I don't know if the patent case against them proves anything against their leadership/strategy. I don't have sources off hand and I could be wrong but from I recall the electronics division basically doubled their value in the last few years largely as result of the Galaxy series, so even after they pay out the $1bn and lose a few pc off their share price for the verdict, so far you can't really fault them that much on that front

(obviously you can fault them, but I mean in terms of how the company is positioned now compared to a few years ago.. of course if a bunch of their devices get banned it may be a different story)

Sorry Blair, I wasn't meaning that the management are not good at running the company. I meant that some of what came out of the case was weird. They knew they were breaching patents, as they decided a year ago to begin designing them out, thats what their engineers have been doing for 12 months. Google told them not to. They then declined patent licence fees. This is all documented from their own documents, so I feel the blatant actions is really what cost them. Thats is what I feel is unstable, and where I thought that article re Google made sense. But off course, this is all based on what I see at a distance. Money wise and reputation wise I dont see the case mattering much. To most people it was last weeks news. They will bounce back, the LTE thing will be interesting though.

blair003

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#685324 13-Sep-2012 08:19

No problem - I was saying for all I know the management may not be good.. it just seems unlikely. But it is possible.. due to their size the CEO may actually suck and he may just have good management around him which is why the company succeeds.

From what I understand everyone in the industry knows they are breaching patents at one time or another.. it is simply not possible to make a smartphone without infringing various patents. Part of that is because of all the dubious patents that have been awarded. And I believe it is normal to make the product and licence later.

The only questions are which patents you are breaching, which ones you think are valid and which ones are critical to your product and therefore ones which ones you should license. The problem in this case is that these details came to light, and perhaps samsungs internal documents didn't show good reason for why they didn't pay licence fees.

If their internal documents had shown they thought the patents were invalid due to prior art therefore they didn't licence them, it would have helped them in court when they made that argument.

tdgeek

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#685326 13-Sep-2012 08:39

blair003: No problem - I was saying for all I know the management may not be good.. it just seems unlikely. But it is possible.. due to their size the CEO may actually suck and he may just have good management around him which is why the company succeeds.

From what I understand everyone in the industry knows they are breaching patents at one time or another.. it is simply not possible to make a smartphone without infringing various patents. Part of that is because of all the dubious patents that have been awarded. And I believe it is normal to make the product and licence later.

The only questions are which patents you are breaching, which ones you think are valid and which ones are critical to your product and therefore ones which ones you should license. The problem in this case is that these details came to light, and perhaps samsungs internal documents didn't show good reason for why they didn't pay licence fees.

If their internal documents had shown they thought the patents were invalid due to prior art therefore they didn't licence them, it would have helped them in court when they made that argument.

Yes, hard to know the real facts, clouded by journo's writing in a pro Apple or pro Samsung way, not clear what points are actually valid or not. Time will tell, in the meantme they will roll out their devices as usual.

oxnsox

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#685707 13-Sep-2012 17:03

blair003: ...snip...
From what I understand everyone in the industry knows they are breaching patents at one time or another.. it is simply not possible to make a smartphone without infringing various patents. Part of that is because of all the dubious patents that have been awarded. And I believe it is normal to make the product and licence later.

The only questions are which patents you are breaching, which ones you think are valid and which ones are critical to your product and therefore ones which ones you should license.

There may also be an element of wait-and-see in this, when it come to taking a competitor to court over a patent right.

In the first instance you'll want a competing product in the market as it validates your own, and with good marketing will increase sales of your own product.

But then comes that grey period of how long you wait, or not, to ping them on an infringement. That indeterminable moment when the competitor is too successful so you need to take action, but knowing all the while that such action could damage your own brand.

All companies probably put some kind of price on the point at which they'll take action, but I doubt it's as easy as a patent breach may make it seem. (So lets all off to the "Formerly the Blackball Hilton" for a drink)