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Comment by mort96 | Hacker News Reader

It’s so wild that a patent owner is allowed to refuse to sell a license to use the patented technology.

Mandatory licensing would be wild. If LG invent something that makes TVs better should they have to licence it to Samsung? Or should they just be able to make better TVs and use their invention for market differentiation?

Being required to conduct good-faith negotiation sounds like a great idea, a reasonable tradeoff between protection that encourages innovation so that inventors can profit off their inventions, while also allowing for society to progress based on those inventions.

LG could ignore trolls and morons - but if Samsung makes a good-faith, fair offer to license the technology, they should have to have a good reason for saying no beyond "we don't feel like it."

One company, Cobasys (owned by an oil company!) purposefully refused to license NiMH technology in transportation. The patent system was never intended to be used like a weapon to protect a market.

> The patent system was never intended to be used like a weapon to protect a market.

This doesn't seem true to me. Nothing about the design of the patent system makes sense if the intent if not to use it like a weapon to let a giant company protect a whole area of the market from competition.

Why shouldn't they have to license it to Samsung? Why do we want to stifle innovation by preventing Samsung from using any of LG's tech and vice versa? Imagine the TVs we could've had if the two companies could combine the best parts of each others' technologies.

As a point of interest, there is a class of patterns called Standard Essential Patents (SEP), which the patent holder is required to sell licenses under fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND) conditions when an implementation of that patented idea is required to comply with certain standards.

If I offer you $100 for an iPhone, should you be forced to sell to me at that price?

I don’t understand what relevance your question has, but of course not?

Huh? That doesn't apply here at all.

> To avoid a complete ban on sales, Apple had two months to cut a deal with Masimo to license its technology, or it could appeal to the Biden administration to reverse the ruling. But Joe Kiani, the chief executive of Masimo, said in an interview that Apple had not engaged in licensing negotiations

> “If they don’t want to use our chip, I’ll work with them to make their product good,” Mr. Kiani said. “Once it’s good enough, I’m happy to give them a license.”

Doesn’t this quite plainly mean that they aren’t willing to just license the patent?

Nothing of the sort.

How does this statement reject a willingness to license?

Because the options are either use their hardware or "work with them". That seems pretty unreasonable to me. You're holding them hostage to collaborate.

I'm not an Apple fan, but this feels like abuse of the patent system. I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know if it's legal, but being forced to work with a company to access their parent feels like absolute bullshit.

Ask for your $X per device sold and be done with it.

Why do you think it should be illegal to refuse to license your patented technology to another company?

What is your actual argument? That they’re willing to license the tech (despite their statement to the contrary), or that it doesn’t matter because it should be legal to refuse to sell licenses?

It is legal to refuse to license. I want to know why you think it shouldn't be.

I obviously know it is legal to refuse to license, that's the problem.

If your whole argument is "it should be legal to refuse to license a patent", I don't know why you went down the whole "They aren't refusing to license the patent" route.

I have no idea what you are talking about. I haven't made any arguments. I asked you a question.

Sorry, I didn't pay enough attention to usernames. caminante argued that the company is willing to license the patent ("How does this statement reject a willingness to license" etc) and I didn't notice that you're not caminante. My bad.

That statement very much reads like they aren't willing to license unless they get final say on products using the tech. Which sounds quite unreasonable as a condition for patent licensing.

"If the horse doesn't want to drink my water"

I'm not depriving the horse of water because the horse doesn't want to drink!

Sorta? Compulsive licensing is something that only exists in a very narrow market for copyright material. Pretty sure it does not exist at all for patents.

You can argue that it is somewhat moot here, as Apple was not showing any willingness to negotiate. But the post above is somewhat accurate, in that there is no guarantee that negotiations will end in a license.

I wasn’t aware either, but it looks like it’s a thing for some potentially critical patents. The example in Wikipedia is the US govt threatening Bayer with compulsory licensing of their anthrax treatment if they refused to lower their price.

I beleive the Wright Brothers also had to give up / forced to licence their patent which was key to modern flight. Maybe WW1 related? I might be wrong here butI remember reading it somewhere.

Practically speaking, damages for the infringement would be a reasonable royalty.[1] So, having to go through the courts to enforce a patent is sorta like a compulsory license, in a way. Going to the ITC skips that, goes simply to stopping future sales.

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/35/284#

> But the post above is somewhat accurate, in that there is no guarantee that negotiations will end in a license.

Why is that revelation "wild?"

Imagine saying,

> It’s so wild that [Bernie] is allowed to refuse to [allow Bob] to [rent Bernie's spare bedroom].

putting aside the fact that [Bob] doesn't even want to rent from [Bernie] as applied to the situation here with the watches! :-)

The patent isn't personal property that the company "owns" like how a person owns a house, it's a segment of the market where the government grants a company a legal monopoly. I don't understand why it should be a total legal monopoly. If the idea was that the company which employed the people who invented something cool should "deserve" to get filthy rich (why do we want that again?), you'd think that could be achieved by forcing other companies who want to be in the same space to pay money to the company which employed the inventors.

But instead we apparently want to say, "no other company should be allowed to make a watch with a pulse oximeter for 20 years unless the company which employed the inventor agrees to it". Why?

> I don't understand why it should be a total legal monopoly...

You're asking philosophical questions about the patent system. I'm not defending the patent system and IANAL.

I recommend the wiki article to get an overview [0]. Your phrasing doesn't align with my understanding of patent law or the article's characterization of the situation.

> The patent isn't personal property that the company "owns" like how a person owns a house...

> But instead we apparently want to say, "no other company should be allowed to make a watch with a pulse oximeter for 20 years unless the company which employed the inventor agrees to it".

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent#Effects

Apple didn't need to use this design to make a pulse oximeter. There are other ways to make them. It's just most of the commonly known other ways aren't as good or accurate as the one Masimo researched and designed.

I think it is fair to argue against it, to a large extent. However, patents are techniques and methods to do something. This would almost be akin to a sport team getting exclusive use of a play because they registered their playbook first. Which, yes, sounds "wild."

I, sadly, don't know all of the details in this case. But with patents, remember that you don't even have to show that "Bob" even knew of the existence of "Bernie." They could have come to the same general techniques completely independently, but because they were not "first to file," they cannot use them.

(Obviously, if I am wrong on the above, please correct me.)

My point was simpler: negotiations don't have to end in agreement, let alone trying to get a patent license.

This discussion has devolved into abstract swipes at the patent law system with characterizations that don't even apply if you take the article at face value.

But that plays into the "wild" part. It is wild that you can refuse to let someone do something that you know how to do.

In the "compulsive licensing" world, it would be "wild" to not allow someone to perform a song that you played first. Which is why we don't allow that.

In fashion, it would be wild for you to have certain button schemes that nobody else can use. We don't allow that. In math, it would be wild to have equations nobody could use. We... sorta do not allow that.

I understand your point (patents are quirky in that they give unilateral blocking rights).

That's not what I'm taking issue with.

Remember, the entire premise of this subthread isn't even grounded in the facts of this case!

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