Huawei To Start Demanding 5G Royalties From Apple, Samsung (bloomberg.com) 75
Huawei will begin charging mobile giants like Apple a "reasonable" fee for access to its trove of wireless 5G patents, potentially creating a lucrative revenue source by showcasing its global lead in next-generation networking. From a report: The owner of the world's largest portfolio of 5G patents will negotiate rates and potential cross-licensing with the iPhone maker and Samsung Electronics, Chief Legal Officer Song Liuping said. It aims to get paid despite U.S. efforts to block its network gear and shut it out of the supply chain, but promised to charge lower rates than rivals like Qualcomm, Ericsson AB and Nokia Oyj. Huawei should rake in about $1.2 billion to $1.3 billion in patent and licensing fees between 2019 and 2021, executives said without specifying which of those stemmed from 5G. It's capping per-phone royalties at $2.50, according to Jason Ding, head of Huawei's intellectual property department. China's largest technology company by revenue wants a seat at the table with tech giants vying to define the rapidly evolving field of connected cars, smart homes and robotic surgery. Battles are unfolding over who profits from 5G that may dwarf the size and scope of the tech industry's first worldwide patent war -- the one over smartphones. But having only just become a major player in 5G standards boards, Huawei is now grappling with U.S. sanctions that have all but crippled its smartphone business and threaten to hamstring its networking division abroad.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:What's good for the goose is good for the gande (Score:4, Insightful)
The U.S. should play the game the same way that China plays it. The U.S. legal system would immediately dismiss any patent infringement suit brought against a U.S. company by Huawei, and then force Huawei to publicly apologize before being allowed to do business in the U.S.
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Re: What's good for the goose is good for the gand (Score:1)
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The US legal system already does that. Remember Apple v. Samsung? Apple sued Samsung for having rounded corners and won.
Being allowed to publicly apologize and then do business in the US would be a welcome relaxation of the rules for Huawei, which is currently banned from doing business in the US or with any business that needs US money handling services or which imports US components.
Of course the US isn't the only country doing it. Apple was forced to apologize on the front page of its website by a judge
Re:What's good for the goose is good for the gande (Score:5, Informative)
I'm sure someone explained how utility and design patents work and differ and you ignored them, but this boiling it down to Apple suing over rounded corners is an idiotic take.
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Combining "I hate Apple" with lack of knowledge of IP, what could possibly go wrong?
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The most damning thing for me was that Samsung released a black slab with rounded corners a few years before the iPhone. Apple ripped it off, and then turned around and sued Samsung over the thing they stole from them.
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wrong bird: (Score:1)
Re: What's good for the goose is good for the gand (Score:1)
Lesser pain (Score:2)
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Huawei was involved in 5G standardization and the pursuit of SEPs from the beginning. You can whine about China all you like, but there certainly weren't any American companies involved this early on. The ethics of SEPs is another matter entirely. They have already moved on to 6G standardization - now might be a good time for the US to stop whining and at least pretend like it has the capacity to participate in innovation in the telecommunications space instead of acting like a petulant child surprised that
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Huawei was involved in 5G standardization and the pursuit of SEPs from the beginning. You can whine about China all you like, but there certainly weren't any American companies involved this early on. The ethics of SEPs is another matter entirely. They have already moved on to 6G standardization - now might be a good time for the US to stop whining and at least pretend like it has the capacity to participate in innovation in the telecommunications space instead of acting like a petulant child surprised that the rest of the world doesn't wait around for it to catch up.
I keep having a recurring dream that someday soon the only service anyone will want from a mobile handset is IP and this will mark the beginning of the end of the traditional mobile carrier.
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Based on worldwide news reports of IP theft by the Chinese Government, probably All of them!
Will they start paying royalties for what they use (Score:2, Insightful)
Should have known.... (Score:1)
Odd definition of "reasonable" (Score:1)
$1B ($1 x 10^9) is on the order of 10^4 man-years of pretty generous salary ($1 x 10^5/year). I cannot accept that this is a reasonable price for the R&D that went into these patents.
I'm not opposed to paying the people that developed the technology, but 10,000 man-years is a ridiculous amount. Say you have a team of 100 engineers and associated support staff to develop that technology. Is 100 years of salary each really a realistic amount? Now consider that this fee will be charged for at least 10 ye
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Huawei is hardly unique here. Thousands of US companies charge similar fees, including Qualcomm.
You are correct that the entire patent system is basically broken by design in the modern economy.
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Yes, I didn't mean to suggest this was unique to this instance; this is indeed a general problem with the modern practice of IP licensing.
The average person doesn't realize that a mere "$2.50 per phone" is astonishing amounts of money that is not really given to the people that made the technology. The engineers and staff that created that tech should be literally set for life with that much revenue, but they aren't; they have to keep working for many years, getting a small fraction of that revenue.
Re: Odd definition of "reasonable" (Score:2)
Actually in most companies the inventor gets no fraction at all. They are typically on salary, and if they get any compensation for an invention at all it's a token award and a fixed payment, usually a few hundred bucks.
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In Huawei, this is certainly the case. There's a bonus that is tied to the level of perceived impact for a given invention, assessed on a wide range of factors - whether it's a SEP, which jurisdictions it meets the inventive step requirements in, how hard it is to detect / workaround, etc. For most inventors, the higher-impact ones still only net them a few thousand individually, although this can also be realized with company shares for profit-participation in China. It's also not uncommon for the inventor
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I'm not opposed to paying the people that developed the technology, but 10,000 man-years is a ridiculous amount.
If your company thought it could have developed it cheaper by itself. Then it should have done that then shouldn't it?
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The problem is that if there is already a patent on the type of item you want to use even developing that item yourself won't do you much good since you would still run into problems with patent infringement.
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That is not how capitalism works.
Things are worth what someone will pay.
Not how long the work took to do.
This is why "pure" capitalism is unsustainable. You would pay any amount to survive... And someone would be happy to put you in that position so they can profit from your suffering.
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Ideas probably stolen from the west (Score:1)
Why bother to invent anything yourself when your owner the chinese government can just indulge in indistrial espionage on an epic scale and pass it on to you to pretend its your own idea and patent ahead of anyone else.
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Do you think the Chinese have a time machine? Do you think American companies are delaying their patent applications for some reason? Even if that was the case, if American companies really were working on these things first but got beaten to the patent office, they should still be able to
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You have to love naivity.
Did I say they were stealing ideas in the Out box ready to head off down the patent office? Muppet. They steal the raw science , engineering and all the other hard work, add a cherry on the top then patent it themselves. And if you think the chinese parent office gives a stuff about priot art in the west then there's a bridge over there with a For Sale tag you might be interested in.
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Speaking of naivety (learn to spell), do you actually think there are American companies that still d
Re: Ideas probably stolen from the west (Score:2)
No shit sherlock. Why do you think there are also so many chinese students in engineering in western universities?
Re: Ideas probably stolen from the west (Score:1)
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I thought Huawei only copied...hmm (Score:1)
"...The owner of the world's largest portfolio of 5G patents will negotiate rates and potential cross-licensing with the iPhone maker and Samsung Electronics..."
How was this Chinese entity (Huawei), able to amass all these patents if it copied/stole them?
I guess innovation is happening in other places than the US of A!
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I guess innovation is happening in other places than the US of A!
Nobody said there was no innovation in China, just that they are prolific when it comes to IP theft. When ranked by country, China steals the most IP in the world.
Every nation innovates and every nation steals IP. China just happens to steal the most IP in the world.
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Nobody said there was no innovation in China
PLENTY of people say there's no innovation in China and that it ONLY copies.
China just happens to steal the most IP in the world.
Technology transfers as a condition of doing business is not stealing. Companies are free to not do business in China.
Re:I thought Huawei only copied...hmm (Score:4, Informative)
Technology transfers as a condition of doing business is not stealing.
Oh, not the stolen IP figure excludes forced technology transfers.
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But as stated above it isn't really forced technology transfers. You only have to do a technology transfer if you wan to do business in China. No one is forcing you to do business in China you choose to do business there and one of the conditions of doing said business is a transfer of technology. I'm sure China isn't the only place where this type of transaction occurs.
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But as stated above it isn't really forced technology transfers.
Riiiight and China doesn't have concentration camps.
What is Forced Technology Transfer (FTT)? [investopedia.com]
Forced technology transfer (FTT) is a practice in which a domestic government forces foreign businesses to share their tech in exchange for market access.
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They simply weren't forced.
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I'd like to know how the amount of stolen IP is determined. It is just people alleging that China stole their IP and that's why nobody bought it, boo-hoo, or is it somehow verified?
Because I know for a fact that people do lie about this stuff. There have been examples of crowd funding campaigns claiming their idea was stolen by China, but in fact they were just trying to pass off something they found on Alibaba was their own invention.
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It can be both.
Probably the more important part of the discussion is that Huawei was literally bootstrapped on IP (hardware designs, software, and even copied manuals) stolen from Cisco, Nortel, and others. The company would not exist as it does today without its historical IP theft. If a mob guy turns his laundered money into investments is he considered legit?
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Huawei was literally bootstrapped on IP (hardware designs, software, and even copied manuals) stolen from Cisco, Nortel, and others.
This doesn't explain Huawei being able to patent all that it has patented. That "stolen" stuff you are talking about would already have been patented, if the stuff was worth patenting.
Well this isn't going to end well. (Score:2, Insightful)
Unless Huawei secretly went after a little guy to establish a precedent, they just went straight after a Goliath on a level playing field. I'm not saying Apple will win (Huawei is also large) but I do know Huawei just started a legal battle it may not be prepared to fight against a company that has unlimited funds to fight for an unlimited amount of time. Apple is one of the most petty companies (right up their with Disney) so they are going fight this tooth and nail.
Re:Well this isn't going to end well. (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless Huawei secretly went after a little guy to establish a precedent, they just went straight after a Goliath on a level playing field. I'm not saying Apple will win (Huawei is also large) but I do know Huawei just started a legal battle it may not be prepared to fight against a company that has unlimited funds to fight for an unlimited amount of time. Apple is one of the most petty companies (right up their with Disney) so they are going fight this tooth and nail.
China will probably happily ban Apple in China until it's all sorted out. Apple has a lot more to lose in this situation. Much more than the patent costs are likely to be.
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China will probably happily ban Apple in China until it's all sorted out. Apple has a lot more to lose in this situation. Much more than the patent costs are likely to be.
Oof... that's a good way to wake a sleeping giant because the US government is rather protective of Apple.
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China will probably happily ban Apple in China until it's all sorted out. Apple has a lot more to lose in this situation. Much more than the patent costs are likely to be.
Oof... that's a good way to wake a sleeping giant because the US government is rather protective of Apple.
And China isn't going to be similarly protective of Huawei?
Things could get quite messy/interesting.
I'm guessing neither government really wants that but would do it if forced. Behind the scenes there will likely be pressure to do a deal.
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Not just banned in China, Huawei would be able to get bans all over the world on Apple devices with patent violating technology in them. Anything with a 5G modem could be seized at the border and destroyed.
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Apple has already agreed to pay. When Huawei's patented technology was adopted as part of the 5G standard, the deal was that it would be licenced fairly to everyone at a reasonable cost. Everyone who then implemented 5G agreed to that, agreed to pay the fees.
That's why Huawei is expecting backdated payments from 2019. Apple and Samsung were always going to have to pay, they just agreed to leave the negotiation for the exact amount to a later date on the assumption that all parties would enter into it in goo
Huawei Charging for Patents is Beyond Irony (Score:4, Insightful)
How many stories have trickled out over the years from American c-level execs about China effectively holding a gun to their companies' heads and stealing IP?
And a quasi-state company like Huawei is slated to rake in $1B+ for patent licensing? Unreal.
But the issue isn't with China and its companies. A lion eating a zebra is in the nature of the lion... the animal does what it does. The issue is with American companies that have prostituted and in many cases continue to prostitute themselves for short-term financial gains in the PRC market.
Yep (Score:2)
How many stories have trickled out over the years from American c-level execs about China effectively holding a gun to their companies' heads and stealing IP?
Fool me one time. Shame on me.
Fool me hundreds of times...
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The problem is that the US government has been incredibly lax with China when it comes to IP theft and free trade. The big crackdown the Trump admin levied against China should have started during the Bush Jr. admin. It's good that the Biden is going to continue Trump's work on this file, but it's an uphill battle at this point. The most important precedents have already been set. China is now fully intertwined with global trade based on that stolen IP and fake "free trade" shenanigans.
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Huawei did the work. They put in the R&D money, developed the 5G tech themselves.
They didn't steal it. If it was stolen they wouldn't be a few years ahead of everyone else, they would be playing catch-up.
They participated in the international standards body that defined 5G, and submitted their technology on the basis that it would be licenced under "Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory" (RAND) terms, which is now what they are doing.
Companies like Apple and Samsung expected to pay royalties, or cross-licen
China BAD! (Score:1)
Will be hard to collect... (Score:2)
since US businesses are banned from doing business with them!
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since US businesses are banned from doing business with them!
Plenty of Apple products China can impound.
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Some negotiation will happen, but as long as Apple is a US-based corporation they are subject to US law and can't just ignore the US government sanctions...
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Has anything gone right with 5G? (Score:4, Insightful)
I would immediately start a new 6G which borrows nothing from 5G and excludes China. Honestly even if that takes years 4G is fine.
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so what is it actually good for?
Give money to PRC.
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so what is it actually good for?
You perhaps meant this as a rhetorical question, but:
* better high density mobile in venues like stadiums
* fixed wireless, such as an antenna on your house
* somewhat lower latency for everyone
* URLLC - guaranteed low loss and <= 1ms latency for things that need it (not your web browser)
* low power, low-bitrate, latency-insensitive, but reliable modes for sensor networks, power meters, asset tracking, etc
Some of these things have been bolted onto LTE over the years. You can think of 5G as a rollup patch,
no point in cross licensing (Score:4, Insightful)
And there is no point in cross licensing because Huawei is shut out of so many Western markets. The normal currency of tech is removed and now Apple, Samsung, and potentially others must send cold hard cash to an arm of the Chinese government. Potentially in ever increasing amounts.
Smooth move with Huawei, US government.
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Actually it would the best way to pay for 5G patents: give them the patents they already stole!