US and EU regulators will give Googorola the nod soon

Google’s planned purchase of Motorola Mobility looks likely to get clearance from US and EU authorities, possibly as early as next week, according to sources within the investigation. The EU has been taking its time to review the competition aspects of Google 's merger with the ailing handset manufacturer – there’s been a lot …

[Arctic fox]

Would be nice if the competition authorities ensured that the following..........

"Google has sought to placate the regulators with a promise to submit to fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND) licensing terms for key technologies and not try and lock up the mobile market."

.........applied to *all* major players in the mobile/tab market. Especially that bit about not trying to lock up the market. Now who might I be thinking of, hmm?

[James O'Brien]

Well now.....

If i had to take a guess it starts with Crap and ends with ple.

Do I get a prize? :)

[Arctic fox]

First prize: An iPad

Second prize: Two.........

Couldn't resist that. -:)

[James O'Brien]

For the hat trick

Third prize should be three.....

[g e]

Don't laugh!

There's good ebay money in that tablet thing :o)

[cloudgazer]

Um

Feel free to quote an instance of Apple asserting a FRAND patent against anybody - and they do have them - H.264 related patents for starters.

[Arctic fox]

@cloudgazer. With the greatest of respect if you like Apple kit fine, I do not have.....

..........the remotest problem with that. However, it must surely be beyond dispute that Cupertino are using the patent law system in a pretty open attempt to assert that the tablet market is their personal bitch. *That* is what my somewhat sardonic comment was referring to, *not* the issue of the type of licensing involved.

[Philip Lewis]

As has been posted ..

several times here at the reg and other places. MMI has been rescinding licences for FRAND licencees for component sales specific to apple, and then demanding 2.x% of the total handset price as extortion. Get it?

A baseband chip supplier pays MMI FRAND licence fees and sells a zillion chips to Apple. Everyone is happy, everyone gets paid, the system functions. MMI notifies baseband chip supplier on the day the new iPhone is released that their licence is terminated as of 60 days, with respect to all and any sales to APPL.

This is an irrefutable fact. Deal with it. Apple has every right to be pissed off, and I hope the courts come down very hard on Motorola.

MMI are playing their last card in a desperate move to unstick Apple, who have shown themselves as being much better at making devices consumers want than MMI.

MMI and its management should rot in a special hell for this despicable behaviour, and to the extent that Google are in on the scheme (and I suspect they are), then Google execs along with them.

[oioi]

apple

how about if apple would pay its frand obligations?

[Mikel]

Hope this goes through.

The patent war is about to get interesting. I wonder what else Google will do with Moto Mobility. Android tablets? Set top boxes? Google TV? Music devices maybe? How 'bout a gPod.

I guess we'll have to wait and see.

[Robert E A Harvey]

gPud

I've invented a thing I call a 'transistor radio' that lets you live stream popular webstream stations without the internet. Might Google buy that from me?

[Mikel]

Transistor radio?

I'm wondering if even that can accomplished without Motorola technologies these days. Motorola invented the high-power germanium transistor and the car radio, among other things. They've been inventing for a long time. Yeah, those patents are expired - but the way such things are done these days companies walk the patents up the chain of modern technologies so that they still own the modern implementation methods.