Aussie Judge Declares Apple-Samsung Patent Battles "Ridiculous"

New submitter Ahab's compliments writes "Score another point for sensible judges — the judge in point wants to know why this dispute over the wireless technologies developed by Samsung and used by Apple shouldn't be settled through mediation. 'Why on earth are these proceedings going ahead?' Bennett asked the lawyers in court today. 'It's just ridiculous.' The judge also rejected a request to hear the various patent infringement claims from either side in separate cases."

Deceptive Summary

[SJ2000]

Keep in mind Federal Court Justice Annabelle Bennett was referring to why this wasn't in mediation, that's it.

Misleading title

[Theaetetus]

According to the judge, the ridiculous part isn't the patents (and feel free to have your own opinions regarding those), but rather the license dispute:

Apple refused to pay a license fee for the technology that allows phones to conduct multiple tasks including taking calls while uploading photos to the internet, Samsung's lawyer Neil Young said at the start of the trial. Apple was willing to pay and Samsung refused, the Cupertino, California-based company's lawyer Stephen Burley said.

Apple says "we were willing to pay a license fee, but they wouldn't take it," and Samsung says "they refused to pay a fee." Translation: Apple was okay with paying, but not the price that Samsung wanted. So this isn't so much a patent dispute, as it is just an argument over a license fee... in which case, yes, mediation would be a lot more reasonable.

Re:Ummmm--are you making Apple's case?

[organgtool]

Samsung believes they gave FRAND terms to Apple--Apple disagrees, they believe the terms were too onerous. Apple is asking the courts to set the price.

Here we go with another Apple fanboy trotting out the FRAND argument. While the terms of FRAND agreements aren't usually disclosed, it is widely thought that part of the price of a FRAND license is a cross-license patent agreement. Apple, however, doesn't want to cross-license their patents, instead they want to license the FRAND patents by paying slightly more than other companies who did cross-license have paid. They are using the court system to pressure the owners of FRAND patents into such an arrangement. They appear to be doing this because for some reason they feel entitled to be able to use the complex technologies that allow phones to discover proximity to towers, determine the closest tower, connect to the tower, seamlessly transition to other towers, and many other difficult tasks for very little compensation while they wish to retain the right to sue the companies that developed those technologies over Apple's patents for slide to unlock and parsing phone numbers. And somehow Apple fanboys have deluded themselves into thinking that this is Fair and Reasonable to the patent holders of wireless technologies as well as Non-Discriminatory despite the fact that all other FRAND license agreements for those same patents likely required cross-licensing a vast war chest of patents.

BTW: the "price" that Samsung is setting is "let us make clones of your tablets and phones"

There's your fanboyism showing itself. If by "clone" you mean make a device whose entire functionality depends on being a touchscreen and having such groundbreaking features as rounded corners, phone number parsing, and slide to unlock, then yes Samsung has cloned Apple's products. I'll tell you what: I will concede that Samsung is cloning Apple's products if you can go into an electronics store and identify every flat-panel television in that store by brand without looking at the logo. Until then, stop making this argument as it just makes you look stupid.