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Comment by SquareWheel | Hacker News Reader

I stopped buying Apple products because of this patent nonsense, so I guess that means I can't buy that Nexus 7 I was eyeing either. Why is it that giant companies consistently act so evil?

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While I would obviously prefer to see no patent lawsuits, Motorola's lawsuit here is very different from Apple's against Samsung.

Apple refuses to license their patents - Samsung et. al. went to Apple and said "won't you please allow us to pay you to use your technology?" to which Apple emphatically answered "NO!". Here, Apple is using Motorola's technology and Motorola said "Apple, will you please pay us if you're going to use our technology?" and Apple's reply was the same: "NO!"

Apple is essentially doing the same thing that they're accusing Samsung of, except that Samsung really wanted to pay Apple, whereas Apple emphatically does not want to pay Motorola.

Pretty sure it was revealed recently that Apple approached Samsung and gave them the opportunity to license a bunch of stuff. That is pretty rare, Samsung refused and Apple sued.

In a sense, you're right. Apple offered to license it's tech to Samsung in 2010 for a whopping $40/device - personally, I don't think that a fee that exorbitant counts, but that's personal opinion. I thing Apple knew they were offering an untenable fee and that Samsung would have no choice but to refuse.

Apple doesn't need to support the bottom-feeders. If Samsung can't pay Apple, that means they're not making enough money on their phones.

Samsung and all Android phone makers are fighting a losing battle as long as they keep such low profit margins. It's the failure of the licensing of one common OS for all phones. Nothing distinguishes these phones enough to allow one company to raise above the rest.

Samsung and the other Android phone makers can't count on anyone's loyalty. The Android user is only interested in the freest phone, regardless who makes it. Today Samsung, tomorrow X (fill in the mark).

Why does Apple have to support that?

> Samsung and all Android phone makers are fighting a losing battle as long as they keep such low profit margins. It's the failure of the licensing of one common OS for all phones. Nothing distinguishes these phones enough to allow one company to raise above the rest.

Apple is fighting a losing battle trying to protect their exclusive, high-end slice of the smartphone world. They've already conceded the future (e.g. India, China and the rest of the developing world). Now they're just haggling over how long the present is going to last.

Apple doesn't need to support it.

At the same time, patents were created as a mechanism to distort the free market in order to promote progress and innovation, not to be used as a weapon against it.

Apple's profit margins clearly demonstrate that these protections are not necessary for the kind of innovation that drives the mobile market these days.

Society doesn't need to support Apple's destructive war when it is working directly counter to the purpose of the patents used to wage it.

Perhaps it is time to force Apple to actually compete on free market terms.

That's what people said about Apple/Samsung until the trial reviled Apple did offer licensing terms which Samsung rejected. We have no way of knowing if Apple offered similar licensing terms to Motorola.

Actually, prior documents released from Motorola and Apple show that Motorola wanted 2.25% of Apple's revenue for its patents[1] - on a $500 device, that's $1.50. Apple rejected those terms. Compare that to Apple's demand of $40/device from Samsung - it's not favorable.

[1] http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/02/04/what-motorola-wants-2...

2.25% of $500 is $11.25

.. and that makes up a pretty hefty hit on the bottom line. A 2.25% drop in revenue could very well cause a >10% drop in profits, even with Apple's large margins.

I think this is an issue of FRAND vs. non-essential patents. Motorola has to license certain patents at reasonable costs. Apples design and non-essential patents have no price controls. They can ask for whatever they want. It's more similar to Microsoft's licensing deal where they get $10-$15 per handset for a handful of non-essential patents. If Apple has more of these non-essential patents that OEMs want to use $30-$40 might be the going market rate for them.

Why is Apple evil for defending itself from companies who are copying much of the look and feel of their phones?

If you invented a new approach to smartphones that became really successful and changed the industry, wouldn't you want to protect your hard work from others who copied it?

Apple has sold over a hundred million iPhones and has sewn up a large chunk of the most profitable market segment.

That should be enough of a reward.

Apple defined the landscape that all Android phones now inhabit.

Your view doesn't make sense to me. If you buy a nice car by working hard, should I be allowed to take it from you after you have had 'enough' time to drive it?

Patents should be granted only on IP that would otherwise risk being locked up indefinitely as a trade secret. Otherwise, they aren't promoting the "progress of Science and the useful Arts" but instead feathering the nests of incumbent producers at consumers' expense.

The patents being lobbed about like grenades don't fall into that category, IMO. No one would ever need to read a patent to see how to implement "slide to unlock."

Apple built a product that was innovative but clearly derivative of what Motorola had been selling for decades, why shouldn't Motorola defend itself in the market it created?

They can. So long as they don't try and license their FRAND patents using non-FRAND terms.

FRAND does not mean that everyone pays the same absolute amount.

It does mean that they are Fair and Reasonable. 2.25% of the total sale value is neither.

This is a terrible analogy. If you take my car, now you have one car, and I have none. That's a zero-sum game.

The smartphone market is not zero-sum. There is plenty of room for multiple similar products.

Uh, Apple has copied android. iOS'es most fundamental feature, notifications, was ripped off from android.

>> iOS'es most fundamental feature, notifications, was ripped off from android.

I won't dispute whether notifications was ripped from Android, but calling Notifications the "most fundamental" feature of iOS is an incredibly huge stretch.

If you ask 10 iPhone users what the most fundamental feature of iOS was, you'd probably get 6 or 7 different answers.

It's the centerpiece for interacting with apps. It's key. In fact, I'm betting it contributed to people confusing android with ios, it's that similar and pervasive. Before they were ripped off the biggest complaint about the iphone was it didn't have android-style notifications. There were many different knockoff apps since people disliked ios notifications so much and apple ended up hiring the lead dev from one of them(mobile notifier) So Apple greatly benefited from ripping off android as this allowed them to close an obvious gap.

If you asked me, Safari is the centerpiece of the iPhone and always has been. It's even more important than the ability to run third party apps.

It was the first phone browser done right, and is still arguably the best. Outside of the phone operations, I would trade away every possible feature of iOS for Safari.

Notifications is an annoying piece of crap for a lot of people including me. That isn't to say the previous generation of alerts were not worse, they were.

But I highly doubt that many people think it is THE cornerstone feature. For some, like me, it's Safari. For others, it's FaceTime, others the camera, etc.

Looks like there can be multiple things that are important to a phone's operation.

Really? I always found Safari on iOS frustrating to use. Chrome/Firefox/Opera on Android all seem like better mobile browsers to me.

I think Safari still doesn't auto-highlight the text in the search box (my most used browser function besides actually scrolling a page), so annoying to start typing a new search time and realize it's just adding on to the last search time until I hit the x. I guess Safari now at least syncs tabs and bookmarks with the desktop version, but still it's a stretch to say it even competes as a top mobile browser IMO.

I think notifications are only annoying on older iOS versions. In Android they've always been unobtrusive, and with Android 3.0+ (and especially in 4.1) they've got a lot of added useful functionality.

But to get back to the point I would say the defining feature on iOS is proper group texting. So, yeah, that's a lot of quibbling words to basically agree with your point.

Mobile Safari cannot reflow Text on zoom. So it is useless for me.

That's the wrong way to think about it. Now that they're equally evil, you can buy whichever one you want. Or else you can't buy any and you might as well go out and play in the sun. Either way, you win.

But if you are planning on buying something, do it now. Soon you might not be able to buy anything.

Yep, if anyone is using legal battles to determine what they should/shouldn't buy, you're going to be drastically disappointed.

As an Apple fan, I hope Google gets their way in the courts if not for a while. Why? Well if not only to get the Android people off their high horses in regards to legal issues and the companies behind them, but it would be the perfect way for an actual debate over software patents to be brought the forefront of public debate.

Reform on patents will only ever happen if people here feel the pain of the process. As it is we're too far removed still.

> Now that they're equally evil

nuance at its finest

This is a defensive response to being sued by Apple, which seems to have been the entire point of Google purchasing Motorola.

Just think of all the money you'll save. :)

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