Apple: Sure, here's the HTC patent pact. WITH numbers blanked out Apple has told Samsung that it will provide a copy of its agreement with HTC to a US court, but only if it's heavily redacted and all monetary terms are blanked out. Samsung filed on Friday to try to get Apple to produce the settlement and patent license agreement with HTC, claiming the document is relevant to its own patent …
charging different prices for your IP may be normal in some cases, but i think that for certain key technologies (i.e. standards that you have rights over, but form the basis of a widely accepted standard, like the GSM spec) you have to licence them on a FRAND basis. Companies accept this as the "cost" of getting their tech accepted as the standard.
FRAND stands for Fair, Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory. So if these patents are the ones in question, and Samsung can prove that Apple are discriminating against them (by offering a cheaper rate to HTC) then i would think that Apple would be in serious trouble...
I don't think Apple have any FRAND (I may be wrong) encumbered standards patents (3G or 2G) - most of these are in the chips purchased from other manufacturers who pay the patent fees, extinguishing Apple's (or whoever puts the end device together) liabilities for those patents. Apple wants others to stop copying the proprietary stuff that makes their "toy" unique and better - thus the Samsung suit.
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:) all these fandroids, I just stated fact that Samsung has been approached by Apple and was trying to come up with a licensing deal. Samsung didn't like it and got sued - which bit of that isn't clear? I'm not talking about specifics, details and so on (I don't have them), what I'm pointing out is the fact that Samsung wasn't willing, HTC in the and was and managed to get 'sweet' deal with Apple.
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Apple settled with HTC because HTC stopped being a competitive threat after effectively falling out of the Android market. The Apple/MS 'secret' deal also protects HTC WP7/8 sales from Apple interference.
With the stakes so low risking a possibly catastrophic trip to court no longer makes sense for Apple, having lost almost every case that reached court (and they've not even actually won against Samsung *yet*). Probably some attempt to hobble the weakened HTC in the deal but for Apple this was just closing down an pointless side war.
I share the opinion this was a catastrophic tactical error by Apple that will end their attempts to obstruct competition much faster.
I was using my N9, which aside from the lack of Apps since Elop killed it (another issue) is a brilliant smartphone. I much prefer it to my iPhone which I have offloaded to my gf. I notice that things "bounce" and that I can "multi-touch" zoom and various other things. Since I have been led to believe here in these forums that Apple has these features patented, can I assume Nokia simply said wow, these are cool ideas we need them and stumped up the cash to Apple?
The N9 and it's children (all Lumia phones) bear about as much resemblance to an iPhone as my dog does. So much for the bollocks about the inevitability of all phones looking like iPhones.
Dweeb
Samsung were a key supplier with privileged access to Apple and got greedy and started making them themselves - they should just pay up the 1Bn and agree a cross licensing deal. The fact that they want to see what HTC are paying is almost evidence / admission that they are going to have to pay and just want to pay as little as possible. Let's move on.
Time for a Winston Churchill analogy.
Winston Churchill to woman : Would you sleep with me for a million pounds.?
Woman: yes
Churchill: Would you sleep with me for 10 pounds?
Woman; Of course not. What sort of a woman do you think I am.
Churchill: We've already established that. We're just haggling over the price.
Dear heaven, what a load of cobblers.
(A) No, the bit of Samsung that supplied stuff to Apple is not the bit that makes the phones, and Samsung has been making phones far longer than Apple anyway.
(B) No, the fact that they want to see the HTC deal is ammunition in their battle against Apple's preposterous attempt to ban Samsung devices, on the basis that Apple claims that some of their souper-douper IP (like the rounded corners or the invalidated bounce-back) is so souper-douper that they (Apple) wouldn't license it at all. Yet they apparently already have licensed it. Conclusion: Apple has been telling the count untruths.
(C) Even if the jury verdict stands (which it won't, because the jury foreman has proudly boasted of his misconduct), the amount of damages won't stand because (i) one of the patents is being invalidated, so Samsung can't have infringed it, and (ii) it makes no numerical sense anyway, in that the rationale for the amount is entirely inconsistent with the amount [the jury found feature X did or did not infringe, yet included both phones with and without that feature in the calculation of the damages].
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