Apple Demands $40 Per Samsung Phone For 5 Software Patents 406
An anonymous reader writes "Apple and Samsung couldn't agree on a patent cross-license even though their CEOs met recently. What could be the reason (or one of the reasons) is that Apple is asking for obscenely high patent royalties. At the March 31 trial an Apple-hired expert will present to a California jury (already the third jury trial in this dispute) a damages claim of $40 per device (phone or tablet) for just a handful of software patents. The patents are related to, but don't cover all aspects and elements of, functionalities like slide-to-unlock, autocorrect, data synchronization, unified search and the famous tap-on-phone-number-to-dial feature. Google says there are 250,000 patentable inventions in a smartphone. On average, Apple wants $8 per patent per device. That would add a patent licensing bill of $2 million to each gadget. So Apple and Samsung will be back to court again later this month."
Proper patent valuation (Score:5, Interesting)
So if their are 250,000 patentable inventions in a phone, and that phone retails for $600, by my math each of those inventions are worth about a quarter of a cent per device. So it looks like Apple has a justifiable claim to 1.25 cents per phone.
If I were Samsung (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd cease all production of the chips that Apple buys. See if you can find a new fab on short order.
Re:How are those kind of things patentable? (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, they do get credit for being at least one of the first to actually shove the components together like this.
For example, after SJ went on stage and demo'd the original iPhone [which by all accounts so far, was on a real device, running real apps], BB was convinced it was all a lie, that Apple couldn't physically get all that stuff together, working that well, that powerful [compared to other phones at the time]. And nevermind the right turn Android took, from a RIM/Windows CE style interface to a Apple interface.
Re:How are those kind of things patentable? (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, they do get credit for being at least one of the first to actually shove the components together like this.
absolutely
The first iphone was a revolutionary device. It changed the direction of smartphones the day it came out. That doesn't mean we'd all be using the same shitty Windows CE interface right now, if iphone never existed. It just would have taken a bit longer for the advancement to happen without apple.
Einstein was the first to discover relativity. He will forever get the credit for this. But had he not existed someone else would have still figured it out. It just would have taken a bit longer.
I think patents, when they are structured correctly, can drive innovation. When they are structured incorrectly they can stifle innovation greatly. When we run the numbers to figure out how long a patent should exist in order to get people to create things they otherwise wouldn't in various fields, we should not be thinking "How valuable is a smartphone like the iphone to society". We should be thinking "How valuable is it to society to get a smartphone like the iphone 1 or 2 years earlier".
Obviously getting a smartphone like the iphone 1 or 2 years earlier is a wonderful thing that is certainly very valuable. But I don't think it is so valuable as to allow a company like apple to prevent good features from making to competitor phones almost a decade after the iphone was invented. Especially when we consider that Apple would probably have made the iphone almost exactly as it is now even if they were not granted these trvially obvious patents.
er, not really (Score:3, Interesting)
I had several good friends who were Palm executive level, including head of UI team. Palm was dumbstruck by the apple interface, it's fluidity and ease of use.
Apple not "seeking" $40 per device (Score:4, Interesting)
Basic trial tactics: ask for x, claim damages are far greater than x, then settle for an amount less than x.
Re: How are those kind of things patentable? (Score:4, Interesting)
The old phones did what interfaces without touch still do today. Highlight the item with the arrows, then select. Replacing that with touching the item to select it is embodied in the invention of touch screen, which is older than Apple itself.
Re:How are those kind of things patentable? (Score:5, Interesting)
I think we're just making the point that those sorts of generic advances do not deserve the protection of law.
Re: How are those kind of things patentable? (Score:4, Interesting)
Ok... Karma to burn.
The design overall was sufficiently unique to the market; it may not have been *patent worthy*, but is it deserving of some level of protection? I have very narrow ideas on what types of intellectual property should be protected; generally that is limited to what could reasonably be considered wholesale copying of a product.
My question is quite simply what type of protection should a company be provided to prevent effectively wholesale copying of their product. Denying that this is what Samsung did is disingenuous, especially in the first rounds of Galaxy products.
The patent suits and the patents themselves are absurd, but that is largely a function of the broader situation-- thousands of patents for trivial inventions, plus a court that limits how many patents can be litigated in a suit.