I believe the problem is that patents are becoming to generic which is good for the patent lawyers but bad for the companies making products.
Qualcomm desires to have a monopoly in telecommunications market and Apple does not want to go along with that. No one Qualcomm latest generation mobile chips have modems integrated into it.
Seriously - one of the ones that got struck is for a freaking level shifter - those are a dime a dozen from any number of vendors because they are so needed in these days of multiple voltage logic it isn't funny. How else does your 1.1V CPU take to 3.3V peripherals or even 5V peripherals. And the antenna power one - well seeing as how it is absolutely IMPERATIVE for Qualcomm's abortion called CDMA.... really, ask a cellular engineer. The biggest joke played on the tech industry was Qualcomm's huge overselling of the capabilities of CDMA. It sounded great, but it was all on paper, in real life it NEVER was able to reach even a fraction of what Qualcomm claimed. They need to disappear for the benefit of the whole industry.
An import ban would have been the only verdict that Apple (and other patent violators) would have respect for.
Never underestimate the kind of influence that a company of Apples size can wield.
Thats why all these courts and commissions ultimately are irrelevant. The violators skate by, if they're big and rich enough, while smaller companies and individual inventors get shafted.
Only other way would be a very hefty fine. Intel's penalty in the AMD vs Intel case was nowhere near enough (fined/payed out a total of around 2.7 billion in a year where their revenue was at least 10x that).
they never actually paid it from my understanding, it was easier just to invest this money and wait to get told you have until X day or the amount will be tripled...was 1.2 Bln, not 2.7, either way is still WAY less then should have been
In November 2009, Intel agreed to pay AMD $1.25 billion as part of a deal to settle all outstanding legal disputes between the two companies. additional 6.5 Mln separate case but tied to it, and later one additional $10 Mln for "misled customer fund"
Either way, even though AMD could "not" produce the sheer amount of chips that they would have needed to produce had Intel not done anything to stop them from being sold with "buddy buddy deals" likely would have been in the 10s of billions per year for many many years, so that paltry under 1.3 Bln means jack crap.
Exactly! Apple has too much influence and is in too many portfolios of too many pension and hedge funds. Doing anything that would hurt it would be career-ending. Maybe EU could do something like that, but not anyone inside US. Look at Apple fanboys, they queue for days/weeks to spend 2 grand on a phone with no tangible improvements (not to count the improved face recognition and other tracking apps) and crap reception. Who else has this kind of influence on the weak-minded?
My guess is that there are multiple infringements on pretty much every phone given the range of IP deployed and the complexity of the devices. That is why companies cross license.
Finding an infringement is quite hard and the number of junk patents out there make it even harder. In this case QC may have a stronger case as Apple do license this patent but probably in an abstract sense, i.e. if you buy QC you get the IP.
IP protection is needed but patents often do not do a good job. However transitioning to a new system at this point is almost impossible. Some progress has been made on how to interpret them and competing evidence/prior art.
How do you know the majority that's queuing up is having the phone from last year? Maybe the didn't get a new phone for several years and thus the upgrade will be more than tangible.
One can stop reading after „Apple fanboys“. No valuable comment was ever made by someone who is stupid enough to insult other people. In most cases, they are just Trolls with an inferiority-complex.
The court found them not in violation of any but 1 of the listed patents, and qualcomm failed to produce evidence. That's QC's problem... they didn't have the evidence to prove that Apple was guilty here.
Awww, poor Qualcomm, one of the biggest patent trolls around. Who sold the whole cellular industry (well, except for AT&T, it seems) a HUGE lie in the form of CDMA. Karma really sucks sometimes.
International patents are retarded. China copies all of shit and builds ours as well. Were still doing business with them. Apple shouldnt pay the fine...wtf they gonna do? We are the USA BITCHES.
Before people get too excited about this, I'd remind everyone that yesterday on Appeal the Moshovos patent claim against Apple by UWisc was rejected (and the associated $500 million fine dropped).
That suit struck me at the time as ridiculous because UWisc is known to be extremely litigious about the patent, meaning that it would be crazy for Apple to simply violate the patent and take their chances; they knew how UWisc would react; meaning in turn that Apple presumably did something different (built a load-store aliasing predictor that operated differently from Moshovos), but UWisc couldn't believe anyone could do anything different...
I mention all this because this is a common pattern I see in patents -- the inventor of the patent is so proud of what they did that they literally cannot imagine alternatives -- meaning that they then see everywhere around them people who "must" be infringing their patent because they "have to" be doing things they the inventor invented. My single brush with this side of patent law came in the late 90s, before the MPEG-LA patent bundling, when I was at Apple. One of the large MPEG companies wanted to sue us for one of the "essential" MPEG patents (or so they imagined) having to do with reordering MPEG frames. (Remember that MPEG orders frames in the bit stream differently from display order.) The discussion started with their lawyers presenting the issue, describing how their patent allowed for rearrangement to display order, and more or less saying "well you have to rearrange to display order, and that's the only way to do it, so I guess you're infringing". It took them a while for me to convince them that, no, the way they were doing it is the OBVIOUS way to do it, but is in fact rather crappy because it's fragile to bit-errors, and doesn't work well in the face of random access [let alone backward playback] so I did something very different.
I fully expect at the end of the day this (and the larger drama of QC claiming "Apple deliberately stole our IP to give it to Intel") will play out in the same way --- a bunch of inventors certain their invention was so good everyone had to be using it will discover that, in fact, there are many ways of doing the same thing, some of them in fact a lot better.
"QC claiming "Apple deliberately store our IP to give it to Intel""
If Apple actually stole the IP, while would they give it to Intel, Apple has technology to create the A12 and they surely could build an modem. If they actually stole the patent, they could skip Intel and make it them selves.
It simple by looking at the patents - at least on the outside - they look to generic.
This claim sounds like something on the kids at WCCFTech
As if anybody in the U.S had the guts do anything that may hurt the cash cow that is Apple. They have sloshed around too much $$ around Washington to basically anything they like !
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osxandwindows - Friday, September 28, 2018 - link
Seems like QC is having a bad time.They failed to provide evidence when asked for some of their claims.
HStewart - Sunday, September 30, 2018 - link
I believe the problem is that patents are becoming to generic which is good for the patent lawyers but bad for the companies making products.Qualcomm desires to have a monopoly in telecommunications market and Apple does not want to go along with that. No one Qualcomm latest generation mobile chips have modems integrated into it.
rrinker - Tuesday, October 2, 2018 - link
Seriously - one of the ones that got struck is for a freaking level shifter - those are a dime a dozen from any number of vendors because they are so needed in these days of multiple voltage logic it isn't funny. How else does your 1.1V CPU take to 3.3V peripherals or even 5V peripherals. And the antenna power one - well seeing as how it is absolutely IMPERATIVE for Qualcomm's abortion called CDMA.... really, ask a cellular engineer. The biggest joke played on the tech industry was Qualcomm's huge overselling of the capabilities of CDMA. It sounded great, but it was all on paper, in real life it NEVER was able to reach even a fraction of what Qualcomm claimed. They need to disappear for the benefit of the whole industry.V900 - Friday, September 28, 2018 - link
Well that kinda sucks for Qualcomm.An import ban would have been the only verdict that Apple (and other patent violators) would have respect for.
Never underestimate the kind of influence that a company of Apples size can wield.
Thats why all these courts and commissions ultimately are irrelevant. The violators skate by, if they're big and rich enough, while smaller companies and individual inventors get shafted.
verl - Saturday, September 29, 2018 - link
Only other way would be a very hefty fine. Intel's penalty in the AMD vs Intel case was nowhere near enough (fined/payed out a total of around 2.7 billion in a year where their revenue was at least 10x that).Dragonstongue - Sunday, September 30, 2018 - link
they never actually paid it from my understanding, it was easier just to invest this money and wait to get told you have until X day or the amount will be tripled...was 1.2 Bln, not 2.7, either way is still WAY less then should have beenIn November 2009, Intel agreed to pay AMD $1.25 billion as part of a deal to settle all outstanding legal disputes between the two companies.
additional 6.5 Mln separate case but tied to it, and later one additional $10 Mln for "misled customer fund"
Either way, even though AMD could "not" produce the sheer amount of chips that they would have needed to produce had Intel not done anything to stop them from being sold with "buddy buddy deals" likely would have been in the 10s of billions per year for many many years, so that paltry under 1.3 Bln means jack crap.
verl - Sunday, September 30, 2018 - link
Reason why I said a total was because of the EU fine as well.Peskarik - Saturday, September 29, 2018 - link
Exactly!Apple has too much influence and is in too many portfolios of too many pension and hedge funds. Doing anything that would hurt it would be career-ending. Maybe EU could do something like that, but not anyone inside US.
Look at Apple fanboys, they queue for days/weeks to spend 2 grand on a phone with no tangible improvements (not to count the improved face recognition and other tracking apps) and crap reception. Who else has this kind of influence on the weak-minded?
RBFL - Saturday, September 29, 2018 - link
My guess is that there are multiple infringements on pretty much every phone given the range of IP deployed and the complexity of the devices. That is why companies cross license.Finding an infringement is quite hard and the number of junk patents out there make it even harder. In this case QC may have a stronger case as Apple do license this patent but probably in an abstract sense, i.e. if you buy QC you get the IP.
IP protection is needed but patents often do not do a good job. However transitioning to a new system at this point is almost impossible. Some progress has been made on how to interpret them and competing evidence/prior art.
star-affinity - Saturday, September 29, 2018 - link
How do you know the majority that's queuing up is having the phone from last year? Maybe the didn't get a new phone for several years and thus the upgrade will be more than tangible.plsbugmenot - Saturday, September 29, 2018 - link
One can stop reading after „Apple fanboys“. No valuable comment was ever made by someone who is stupid enough to insult other people. In most cases, they are just Trolls with an inferiority-complex.Peskarik - Saturday, September 29, 2018 - link
don't get your knickers in a twist, you can have your iphone. You can even camp outside of a store for a few days, to get your new shiny toy.plsbugmenot - Saturday, September 29, 2018 - link
I did‘t mention any product or brand.WinterCharm - Sunday, September 30, 2018 - link
Skirt by?The court found them not in violation of any but 1 of the listed patents, and qualcomm failed to produce evidence. That's QC's problem... they didn't have the evidence to prove that Apple was guilty here.
rrinker - Tuesday, October 2, 2018 - link
Awww, poor Qualcomm, one of the biggest patent trolls around. Who sold the whole cellular industry (well, except for AT&T, it seems) a HUGE lie in the form of CDMA. Karma really sucks sometimes.WasHopingForAnHonestReview - Saturday, September 29, 2018 - link
International patents are retarded. China copies all of shit and builds ours as well. Were still doing business with them. Apple shouldnt pay the fine...wtf they gonna do? We are the USA BITCHES.Trixanity - Saturday, September 29, 2018 - link
I hope that's a joke comment because the ignorance is painful. Qualcomm is also an American company. Actually all companies involved are American.sonny73n - Saturday, September 29, 2018 - link
Did mental wards let their patients get online nowadays?londedoganet - Saturday, September 29, 2018 - link
Mental patients didn’t do anything to deserve to be lumped in with this guy.29a - Saturday, September 29, 2018 - link
I see Trump has started posting on Anandtech. #magazorxd - Saturday, September 29, 2018 - link
If it were Huawei instead of Apple, we can bet there would have been an import ban.name99 - Saturday, September 29, 2018 - link
Before people get too excited about this, I'd remind everyone that yesterday on Appeal the Moshovos patent claim against Apple by UWisc was rejected (and the associated $500 million fine dropped).That suit struck me at the time as ridiculous because UWisc is known to be extremely litigious about the patent, meaning that it would be crazy for Apple to simply violate the patent and take their chances; they knew how UWisc would react; meaning in turn that Apple presumably did something different (built a load-store aliasing predictor that operated differently from Moshovos), but UWisc couldn't believe anyone could do anything different...
I mention all this because this is a common pattern I see in patents -- the inventor of the patent is so proud of what they did that they literally cannot imagine alternatives -- meaning that they then see everywhere around them people who "must" be infringing their patent because they "have to" be doing things they the inventor invented. My single brush with this side of patent law came in the late 90s, before the MPEG-LA patent bundling, when I was at Apple. One of the large MPEG companies wanted to sue us for one of the "essential" MPEG patents (or so they imagined) having to do with reordering MPEG frames. (Remember that MPEG orders frames in the bit stream differently from display order.) The discussion started with their lawyers presenting the issue, describing how their patent allowed for rearrangement to display order, and more or less saying "well you have to rearrange to display order, and that's the only way to do it, so I guess you're infringing".
It took them a while for me to convince them that, no, the way they were doing it is the OBVIOUS way to do it, but is in fact rather crappy because it's fragile to bit-errors, and doesn't work well in the face of random access [let alone backward playback] so I did something very different.
I fully expect at the end of the day this (and the larger drama of QC claiming "Apple deliberately stole our IP to give it to Intel") will play out in the same way --- a bunch of inventors certain their invention was so good everyone had to be using it will discover that, in fact, there are many ways of doing the same thing, some of them in fact a lot better.
id4andrei - Sunday, September 30, 2018 - link
We always knew Apple was innocent; it's the courts that are biased against them.HStewart - Sunday, September 30, 2018 - link
"QC claiming "Apple deliberately store our IP to give it to Intel""If Apple actually stole the IP, while would they give it to Intel, Apple has technology to create the A12 and they surely could build an modem. If they actually stole the patent, they could skip Intel and make it them selves.
It simple by looking at the patents - at least on the outside - they look to generic.
This claim sounds like something on the kids at WCCFTech
name99 - Monday, October 1, 2018 - link
Umm, do you actually KNOW what I am talking about? Have you read the court documents?Here's the simple version:
https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/25/17902384/blockb...
Maybe save the mocking until you know what you're talking about?
webdoctors - Wednesday, October 3, 2018 - link
I doubt it was Moshovos pushing the lawsuit, he was my professor and a pretty cool guy. He's not a patent troll suing ppl for using what's obvious.The Apple giving IP from QC to Intel is a very different can of worms and should be interesting.
name99 - Wednesday, October 3, 2018 - link
Like I said:http://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2018/1...
Wolfclaw - Monday, October 1, 2018 - link
As if anybody in the U.S had the guts do anything that may hurt the cash cow that is Apple. They have sloshed around too much $$ around Washington to basically anything they like !