Apple Claims Samsung and Motorola Patent Monopoly 381
esocid writes with a bit in Daily Tech about the ongoing spat between Apple and the rest of the mobile world. From the article: "Apple lawyers are crying foul about Samsung, and ... Motorola's allegedly 'anticompetitive,' use of patents. ... Apparently Apple is irate about these companies' countersuits, which rely largely on patents covering wireless communications, many of which are governed by the 'fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory' (F/RAND) principle, as they were developed as part of industry standards. ... Apple takes issue with the fact that Motorola in its countersuit declines to differentiate the 7 F/RAND patents in its 18 patent collection. ... Regardless of what Florian Mueller says, it's hard to dispute that the 'rules' of F/RAND are largely community dictated and ambiguous."
How dare they sue us! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Apple has been on lawsuit-rampage during the last 6 months, its nice to see at last some action from Google. This is going to be fun!
Define "rampage". They've sued Samsung in multiple jurisdictions for copying the iPad and iPhone. And they've got maybe one or two other suits, that aren't merely countersuits, against other companies.
So, where's this "rampage" you speak of?
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Besides, just look at the Galaxy Tab from the front. It looks almost exactly like an iPad.
It looks like a black rectangle with rounded edges, filled with a touchscreen covered by a panel. This is exactly how all other Honeycomb tablets look - e.g. Xoom looks the same from the front, and so does Asus Transformer. The idea that such a look can be patentable is ridiculous on its face.
For that matter, it quite obviously doesn't look "exactly like an iPad" because it doesn't have [samsung.com] the signature hardware home button of the latter. Furthermore, the frontal camera is oriented such that it is centered whe
Re:How dare they sue us! (Score:5, Funny)
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Too bad the court disagreed and even named a tablet that looked quite similar. Thicker, but that was only due to technology limits at the time. The icon layout does not look default on those Samsung devices, someone rigged it to look similar.
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Too bad you both missed your humorTab(C)(Patent Pending by Johnson's wax) today.
Double up tomorrow. Remember, side effects may include nausea, blurred vision and priapism.
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Have you watched ST:TNG? Or 2001 Space Odyssey? Of course every company making blatant copies of this 'awesome' Apple patent [google.com].
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That appears to be a patent on a rectangular solid. Sad.
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14 Apple engineers worked very hard to invent this.. rectangular dingus.
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Rhombus with icons on it.
Of course, it may have a PR problem:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/1/9/ [penny-arcade.com]
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How about a video clip of a tablet long before they were ever made?
http://www.techspot.com/news/45209-samsung-stanley-kubrick-invented-the-tablet-in-2001-a-space-odyssey.html [techspot.com]
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You do realize the 'tablets' shown in this movie were display only (a monitor) and had no means of input whatsoever, even in the movie?
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I think you err. Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke were both smart enough to remove the inputs and the icons to avoid being sued by Apple. Frigging GENIUSES, weren't they?
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The first electronic table was in 1888, used for handwriting over wire.
And there have been more. In fact 'tablet' was coined by Microsoft. regarding a computing device, natch.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tablet_computer [wikipedia.org]
Apple has never done anything first; which is fine. They do improve them and make stylish devices.
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btw - HP also made similar devices that were even more iPad-like [cnet.com] in 2002. This page [lancs.ac.uk] has pics.
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I have a GRiDPad 1910 and a 2390 as well. Both are a black rectangle. The 1910 is very square, but the 2390 has rounded corners. If you can extrapolate a trend from two data points (there are others that show it, but these are the only ones for which I have examples in my actual possession) then we get a flatter black rectangle with more rounded corners. Both of these PCs are somewhere between XT and AT class. In my case, both of these run GEOS with Graffiti from Palm Computing, but only the 2390 came that
Re:How dare they sue us! (Score:4, Interesting)
http://techcrunch.com/2008/07/21/we-want-a-dead-simple-web-tablet-help-us-build-it/ [techcrunch.com]
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I don't think anyone is arguing the fact that there wasn't tablets before the iPad, but the "Many of them looked similar" line is what is getting everyone's panties in a bunch. There was not a single tablet on the market or even introduced to the market that looked anything like the iPad. Everyone had some sort of bulky case thingy that held the display, no one had a flat surfaced tablet. Tablet Designs Before and After the iPad.
Fuck you and your bullshit link, which is a lying lie told by a liar, and you are a liar too for repeating it. How about the GRiDPad 1910 [hyperlogos.org] or the GRiDPad 2390 [microsoft.com]? Okay, so they have some buttons on them; so did all the portable devices of their day. I also own a DT360 [dtresearch.com] which seems like a good example of what you're saying, but the big rubber stuff is an optional accessory and while mine is red, it was also offered in black. I'm running Debian Lenny with Matchbox on mine; Lenny is probably the earliest Linux with
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Oh, come on ... I have an iPad, and I'm hard pressed to see how any of these are different.
Here's my short take on this ... unless it's radically different in shape from an Etch-A-Sketch, or a tablet of paper ... how the hell is the shape of an iPad even something you could consider having any protection on?
The Greeks had stone tablets, and a mathemati
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It's really very unfair. Here we were, just defending our rightful monopoly over all things rectangular with screens on the front, and these uppity bastards with their "patents" on "foundational RF technologies" that they supposedly "invented" are getting all touchy about it. WTF?
Problem with your thinking is....no tablet looked anything remotely like the ipad until the ipad came out. Look at the picture at the bottom of the link to see the blatant copying Samsung did. http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/08/30/apple_accuses_motorola_samsung_of_monopolizing_markets_with_patents.html [appleinsider.com]
http://techcrunch.com/2009/06/03/crunchpad-the-launch-prototype/ [techcrunch.com]
http://lawpundit.blogspot.com/2011/08/samsung-digital-picture-frame-2006-is.html [blogspot.com]
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While Apple had to Photoshop the Galaxy Tab to fool the courts into thinking it looked like an iPad, your source [appleinsider.com] was much more clever. They strategicly tilted the galaxy tab when comparing it to the iPad to shorten the apparent aspect ratio to closer match the iPad.
Do Apple lawyers write their articles? Probably not, cause whoever did that was much more clever than Apple lawyers.
Re:How dare they sue us! (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't remember where I first heard this - possibly from a teacher in junior high school. "If you're not part of the solution, then you're part of the problem." I'm another person who is sick of these patent wars. One day, you want to cheer this side, or the other side, the next day you want to cheer the interlopers who file those "friend of the court" briefs, then a week later, you want to see the real low-life trolls burnt at the stake. It's an endless drama among the lawyers trying to milk the techworld.
And, I'm just sick of it. Apple hasn't been part of the solution, nor has Microsoft, or Samsung, or Motorola, or IBM, or - well, I could go on. Everyone who has ever filed a software and/or frivolous design patent like basic description of the Apple iPad is part of the problem. Most patents need to be done away with. I can't remember now what the numbers were, but apparently more patents have been granted in the past ten years, than were granted in all of patent history. It's ridiculous. Worse, it's insane.
Idiots sitting at a corporate conference mull the need to patent a shape, because they might use that shape sometime in the unforseeable future. Preposterous.
World Class Hypocrisy (Score:5, Insightful)
So when Apple sues its competitors with overly broad patents it's "protecting its innovations"
When the targets of Apple's anti-competitive lawsuits counter-sue Apple cries "anti-competitive" monopoly.
Apple gets more evil every day.
Re:World Class Hypocrisy (Score:4, Funny)
Re:World Class Hypocrisy (Score:4, Informative)
Here's Steve Jobs explaining his point of view on design [youtube.com]
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The surprising thing is that it took them so long to bring a lawsuit against Android.
Re:World Class Hypocrisy (Score:5, Insightful)
This is different than the Apple patents, which theoretically can be worked around. Apple doesn't even want to license them, they want to prevent competitors from using the stuff they invented. Other people should go invent their own stuff. And legally, patents give them that right. It's great, isn't it? (sarcasm) But not hypocritical, unless you have no understanding of the issue.
Sounds like MS Document Standards (Score:3)
I might be mistaken, but Microsoft tried to make their office document formats standard AND proprietary. In other words, extortion. "Comply with the standard, FOSS, but pay the oh so small fee for the patent."
The Apple claim is still BS, though. Motorola could claim that GSM can be worked around by using wifi and software... which is about as effectual as working around a thin rectangular screen tablet by making it a circle (and some idiot actually suggested that on another forum).
Re:World Class Hypocrisy (Score:5, Insightful)
So wait - Motoroal who invented something which is integral part of a mobile phone should not ask for any return on that from Apple and Apple should use such core technology for free, but Apple can charge anybody for rectangles and others should bend over and pay them???
And also, Apple's lawyers do all this without Apple's wish?
*head explodes*
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Re:World Class Hypocrisy (Score:4, Funny)
Please get a clue (Score:3)
The problem is Apple uses patents that are not covered by FRAND and are claiming that FRAND licensing gives them access to non FRAND patents. They tried this line for years with Nokia until finally having to settle for cash.
FRAND only covers essential GSM patents. I.E. only the patents you need to create a GSM phone, not all th
Re:World Class Hypocrisy (Score:5, Insightful)
Most F/RAND patent licenses include retaliation clauses. A patent retaliation clause allows a company who is being sued over patent infringement to revoke licenses to its IP. I don't know about you, but generally when I sign a piece of paper I look at it what it says and think before I act because it may cost me.
Not only that, Apple seems to think they own rectangular device with an LCD touchscreen. Most of these Apple patents shouldn't even be valid. They "Just want" their competitors not to make phones with touch screens or process phone numbers to link them directly to the call function, or use an "Object oriented messaging system". Take your pick, most of these patents are crap.
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Maybe the judge will agree with Apple and abolish all the patents.
heh.
For Chrissakes (Score:4, Insightful)
Look, you pack of fucking navel-gazing fucktards. Put down the fucking guns, agree to pool your resources to buy sufficient hookers and Caribbean vacations for Congresscritters to have the existing patent system tossed out the door. We get it that you all sort of started out accruing vast numbers of patents, some good, some bad, some absolutely fucking moronic, in no small part to fend off attacks from each other and from evil little patent trolls, but look at how it's complicating your lives. You couldn't roll out a steaming turd without someone somewhere trying to claim you infringed on a patent they own.
Apple, you're now one of the biggest companies around. If anyone can afford the required number of prostitutes, golf club memberships, or whatever it is those corrupted evil bastards in Congress have an appetite for. Google, come on, you could help out here, same with Samsung. Then you can, you know, compete on the quality of your products, rather than trying to stuff newspaper down each others throats in what can only be described as the bonfire of the idiots.
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If anyone can afford the required number of prostitutes, golf club memberships, ..
Sure Apple can do that- but so can Microsoft [slashdot.org]
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So the real solution here is to make hypocrisy a capital offense.
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Re:For Chrissakes (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple's "bigness" is pending their continued popularity. The moment they cease to be popular, they will implode. They are not diversified enough to sustain itself as the market changes. Given that they base themselves exclusively on the consumer market, there may never be such a thing as "critical mass" in any of Apple's market places.
Critical mass is crucial to successful staying power. As it is, nothing that Apple offers is "necessary" and the cost of moving away from Apple at any point in time is trivial. Let's make the argument that Apple's iDevice apps have created something that resembles critical mass which I am sure many people would try to argue. Let's look at the money that users actually put into the software. $2 here, $5 there... $25? Unheard of for the most part. The numerous apps attract consumers to buy the iDevices, but the sunk costs aren't quite high enough to keep people married to them.
Now if we were talking about serious enterprise investments, even those nickel-and-dime expenses could equal something big, but Apple doesn't market to the enterprise and I have yet to see an iPhone deployment in a business that resembles deployments like blackberry. The same goes for Apple computers. I recall one jerk who used Apple itself as an Apple enterprise deployment. Dear god... that simply does not qualify.
Apple, I believe, has strategically limited itself so that it does not fall under various antitrust and other law/rules so that it can continue its "style" of business/abuse.
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Florian Mueller is not a patent lawyer. From the wikipeida entry [wikipedia.org]:
"He blogs frequently about patent issues and gives legal advice, despite having no formal legal training."
So, appeals to his authority are suspect at best.
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Since when is Florian a patent lawyer?
He is a professional troll, nothing more.
Is apple part of the body that defined those standards, is that group still open for new members?
F/RAND agreements often don't apply to the public, or in a more limited matter. This are contracts not matters of law.
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The expectation of backlash suits was likely expected as less innovative companies scan their patent portfolios in a desperate attempt to limit the innovation gap between their company and Apple. You can only lose a patent argument a few times before the patent becomes toothless against
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1 or 2 years ahead?
So then why did they not have copy paste until after android?
You are a nut.
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The expectation of backlash suits was likely expected as less innovative companies scan their patent portfolios in a desperate attempt to limit the innovation gap between their company and Apple.
So, creating easy-to-use UI is "innovation", and Motorola (and probably others) is one of "less innovative companies"?
You are a retard.
Pot, meet Kettle (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember that little kid that hit the other kids, but as soon as another kid hit back he'd start crying? Apple is now that kid.
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And Florian Mueller is the parent of that kid, attempting to defend their precious little snowflake, through misinterpretation and obfuscation.
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Sounds like one of those weird SF stories in which someone travels back in time, fucks their grandmother and alters history completely.
Coincidense? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Here we go again. Perfectly insightful and on point analysis of Apple gets modded down. I sure hope this ends up in meta-moderation and someone fixes this abuse of the system. Or barring that, hopefully enough people reply to this with posts that are then modded up to keep it part of the discussion.
Yes Apple, we know you have your fanboys here from the PR department with mod points to try to control the discourse. As Streissand learned, you can't control teh intarwebz. We all know how much your company
hoist by their own petard (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple's unyielding patent attack has to come to trouble for them eventually. It's bad enough MS wants $15 from every Android phone, but Apple just plain is trying to bar companies from competing.
The industry will eventually respond with the only tool they have, more patent garbage.
Perhaps this is the start of that.
It's going to take a long time before Apple realizes they can't win this legal battle and they should have just kept competing in the marketplace instead. They're pretty good at that, I'm not sure why they want to try to turn the business into a web of red tape for everyone instead of just pushing forward.
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The financial institutions came up with a lot of
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The industry will eventually respond with the only tool they have, more patent garbage.
This is exactly it. It was inevitable that, when faced with patent attacks, companies would acquire patents to defend themselves in a "Mutually Assured Destruction" scenario. Microsoft thought that they could charge a slice of every Android handset sold. Apple wanted HTC and Samsung phones and tablets taken off the market. What did they think was going to happen? That these companies would just shut up and die? Of course not. Instead, HTC acquired S3 for its large patent portfolio, and Google acquired Motor
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Apple is honestly convinced that the rules really don't apply to them because they are soooo cooool. They are ALWAYS the victim...eve
HAHAHAHAHAHA (Score:2)
HAHAHAHAHAHA, ah, now my stomach hurts. Apple isn't playing nice in patents, and now they're bitching about others not playing nice? You know, I guess maybe Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field must have lasting effects.
Seriously though they'd have a point if Apple wasn't acting like, well, a total and complete legal asshole. Keep in mind these are countersuits to Apple. Apple is basically using Motorola's good will, turning around and stabbing them in the back, and then complaining that Motorola doesn't ac
What's good for the goose is good for the gander (Score:4, Insightful)
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We could have had the next iPad killer by now if they weren't wasting time and money on lawsuits!
This is precisely what Apple doesn't want.
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We could have had the next iPad killer by now if they weren't wasting time and money on lawsuits!
And how would that be good for Apple?
Hey Apple (Score:2)
Didn't you learn anything as a kid, Apple? (Score:4, Interesting)
Apple is irate about these companies' countersuits, which rely largely on patents covering wireless communications, many of which are governed by the 'fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory' (F/RAND) principle, as they were developed as part of industry standards
And yours are all artistic and nothing else, eh? The industry shouldn't use any of your mechanisms for compatibility or interchange, right?
Grow up. You started the sh**, now deal with it.
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Personally, I don't know anyone with an iPad that seriously considered another device and i don't know anyone that picked another device that seriously consi
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... History does repeat itself, it would seem.
A-effin'-men. And Humans wonder why things take so long to improve. Focus, people, focus.
Did they do that with a straight face? (Score:2)
How?
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Apple is irate (Score:2)
Is it going to start throwing chairs?
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No, but they have a patent pending for the iRate. Next time Ballmer throws one, fscking lawsuit country, baby.
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Wish Samsung would play hardball (Score:2)
Given that Apple is suing Samsung while at the same time using Samsung chips in their products, Samsung should halt all production of chips to Apple and see what happens. But of course nobody is that crazy...
Hahahaha (Score:2)
Steven P. Jobs has bragged about his mastery of stealing ideas from others, stating, "Picasso had a saying - 'Good artists copy, great artists steal.' And we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU
Blowback (Score:2)
Unusually lame and egregiously hypocritical, even for lawyers!
Essentially, Apple's defense is: "our obvious patents on egg-sucking are valid, yours are invalid because they're F/RAND submarines".
I had not heard any court invalidated patents as F/RAND and submarines still live (RAMBUS).
Apple is the worst kind of narcissist (Score:2)
Apple produces nicely designed cases, and some of their UI design is tasteful and effective. Otherwise, they suck, but since they drink their own koolaid, they think everyone else sucks, AND that everyone else aspires to be Apple.
if you believe you have designed the uberphone or uberpad (or uber-UI - remember the ancient war with MSFT), it is only natural that you feel threatened whenever someone else makes a vaguely rectangular tablet with, say, a front-facing display.
Apple is letting its hired dogs (lawy
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Or even the SNES controller and the PSX controller
And for even more irony, compare the PlayStation Dual Shock (original, 2, or 3; it doesn't matter) to the Nintendo Wii Classic Controller Pro.
Turns out copying works in both directions.
Dug their own grave (Score:2)
Wow...Just...Wow... (Score:2)
There, finally (Score:3)
The insanity of the software patents seems to be finally blowing up in an extremely public way.
I really hope that the lawsuits against Apple result in very harmful for them consequences, ideally something ridiculous like forcing them to pull iPhones and iPads from the shelves.
Why? Because if that happens, there's no way it will stand. It will be discussed all over the world, and everybody will agree it's a crappy state of affairs. Maybe then some sanity can be introduced by eliminating them.
That might be a bit too optimistic, but still this is a perfect example of what's wrong with the system. At least it'll make a good explanation of why software patents are a bad idea, and should be kept out of the places that don't yet have them.
Re:There, finally (Score:5, Informative)
The patent that Apple has used to pull Samsung Galaxy Tabs from the shelves isn't a software patent. It's a design patent for a thin, rounded-rectangle, flatscreen computer. It's even more absurd.
Hahaha (Score:2)
So, it's ok for them to sue someone because they think they own rights to rectangular shape with round corners, but when someone with real tech patent sues them back - they act like babies?
I wish all tech companies would die.
RTFA, particularly the second link. (Score:2, Informative)
The first link is a DailyTech Blog by Jason Mick, an author well known for factual inaccuracies in every post, and for continual Apple bashing. Consider the source, and double check all facts before drawing any conclusions from it.
The second link includes an informative discussion of the actual issues. The core of Apple's argument, that Samsung is asserting that Apple is violating "standards essential" patents, for which Samsung has offered no F/RAND licensing, which is a clear violation of antitrust regula
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Re:One point - FRAND was a promise to ALL (Score:5, Insightful)
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Exactly FRAND is a community agreement, and when Apple starts acting like its part of a community then it will get access to those patents again.
Apple is basically trying to reargue the "look and feel" case it lost against Windows.
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From TFA (the one from Florian, the patent expert, not DailyTech, the tech reporting site), Samsung itself complained about Ericsson and Rambus for the usage of FRAND or undisclosed-essential patents and they should be barred from enforcing them.
Apple didn't even want to prevent Samsung from enforcing them. It just wants to separate the cases between : "having to pay a licence for FRAND patents" and "being blocked from selling products because of non-FRAND patents".
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the one from Florian, the patent expert
You can't really be a patent "expert" without being a lawyer.
He's certainly a patent pundit.
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Let's say that you're a small company with FRAND patents and one product. Someone strolls in and sues to block the sale of this *one* product with patents (bogus or otherwise) that they have for their competing product. Blocking the sale of your one product will kill your company. Furthermore, their competing product uses your FRAND patents without license.
Are you, at this point, going to license at a reasonable rate and risk getting nuked? Hell no. Now, extrapolate to a larger company.
Apple even goes
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I find dubious DailyTech calling Florin Mueller "a pro-Apple blogger" for his patent litigation analysis... while Florian Mueller *IS* the professional expert on patents.
To be a "professional expert" your profession would have to be "lawyer." Florian Mueller's professions include lobbyist and blogger, but not lawyer.
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the LG prada phone was anounced before the iphone, LG even acused apple of stealing it's design.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Prada_(KE850) [wikipedia.org]
read the "iphone controversy" section.