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It's frustrating that sales of a product can somehow be up for grabs over disputes in a mere component of that product. No matter how good your idea or, ahem,

It's frustrating that sales of a product can somehow be up for grabs over disputes in a mere component of that product. No matter how good your idea or, ahem, sorry, "intellectual property" is, if you don't know HOW to turn it into a multi-billion dollar product or you don't have the means to do so, WHY should you be able to sledgehammer your way into lots of money when somebody else becomes successful? If anything, years of inaction on your "idea" proves that the idea has NOT been worth all that much to you. Meanwhile, there could be literally thousands of unique components in an iPad, the products of tens of thousands of brilliant minds, many of whom get virtually nothing. Heck, I give more credit to the tertiary industries such as the people delivering the iPhone packages to my door, than I do to any owner of a patent for a product that they didn't build.

biot 11y ago
While you may have a point for patent trolls fishing for royalties on obvious "inventions", this hardly applies to Ericsson: http://www.ericsson.com/ourportfolio/products http://www.ericsson.com/ourportfolio/products
hyperliner 11y ago
A "component" needed to make a product is your salary and skills. Should you not get paid a salary for your effort and know-how? I mean, it's not like you are building "the whole product," you are just building some feature.
- Ironchefpython 11y ago
  > I mean, it's not like you are building "the whole product," you are just building some feature. If slavery was still legal, you'd better fucking believe that the corporation that owned you would be suing other corporations over getting a percent of the revenue for some work you did. But alas, you are just a person, and as such you don't get to write laws and international trade agreements, so your contributions to a product aren't litigated over.
hlmencken 11y ago
I mean, this is what they agree to in order to keep making the product. This was a settlement and is what apple agreed to instead of having to discontinue the property theft and pay damages. consider this intellectual property in the way you would consider copyright, if i gave out an album but had stolen a song on it I could license the song and give the original artist a cut off the top or else i could be sued and give up my ability to keep distributing the album. It's not that this is up for grabs it's that this is what they are willing to give up to continue using ericsson's property and ameliorate previous damages.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
polskibus 11y ago
Standing on the shoulders of giants you sometimes have to pay them for what they did so far.
- HiLo 11y ago
  No, don't you get it? They clearly weren't giants if they couldn't do everything themselves, so it's okay if we don't do everything ourselves, not pay them, and make more money. (obviously kidding)
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
HiLo 11y ago
I couldn't disagree with you more. If you don't know HOW to build a multi-billion dollar product without stealing prior work that isn't yours, WHY should you be able to sledgehammer your way into lots of money by preventing somebody else from getting paid for what they did? Furthermore, a current lack of sufficient resources to pursue an idea does not mean that you never intend to do anything with it. The poster seems to think that the arbitrary amount of "a few years" discredits any prior work, as if it doesn't take people much longer periods of time to get their life in order and bring their life's work and ideas to fruition.
- gozur88 11y ago
  >If you don't know how to build a multi-billion dollar product without stealing prior work that isn't yours, WHY should you be able to sledgehammer your way into lots of money by preventing somebody else from getting paid for what they did? The assumption being, of course, that you actually stole prior work instead of coming up with the same idea. From what I can tell, most of the time these patents cover obvious stuff. A touch screen on a phone? Who would have thought of that? Everybody, actually. Everybody.
  - HiLo 11y ago
    Patents are a bit more nuanced than "touch screen on a phone."
    - gozur88 11y ago
      It's been a long time since I saw a patent that wasn't a description of the most obvious way to do something. Where I work the company is trying to patent everything (mostly, I would hope for defensive reasons). I have patents in my name. And they're all written as broadly as the USPTO will accept, which is pretty damn broadly. The language is subtle, but in most cases the implications of the language are not subtle.
      - throwawaykf05 11y ago
smackfu 11y ago
Assume that to use a patent you pay a licensing fee. Assume that the licensing fee is a percentage of the selling price for the product (because only a fool is paid a percentage of profit.) Assume that someone does not license your patent, and uses it anyway. Why shouldn't the penalty be based on the licensing fee that was avoided? Is 0.5% really that outside the range of valid licensing fees?
jonknee 11y ago
> Heck, I give more credit to the tertiary industries such as the people delivering the iPhone packages to my door, than I do to any owner of a patent for a product that they didn't build. The iPhone would be shit if it wasn't for the advanced radio it uses that is based off of Ericsson's technology. There are lots of patents in the agreement and some may seem dodgy, but you can't deny that Ericsson had a huge hand in developing all the radio stuff that we just take for granted. Apple isn't part of the 3GPP and had nothing to do with inventing any part of 2G/3G/4G/LTE. Even Apple doesn't deny this, they just wanted a different royalty rate after their previous agreement with Ericsson expired.

biot 11y ago

While you may have a point for patent trolls fishing for royalties on obvious "inventions", this hardly applies to Ericsson: http://www.ericsson.com/ourportfolio/products http://www.ericsson.com/ourportfolio/products

hyperliner 11y ago

A "component" needed to make a product is your salary and skills. Should you not get paid a salary for your effort and know-how? I mean, it's not like you are building "the whole product," you are just building some feature.

Ironchefpython 11y ago
> I mean, it's not like you are building "the whole product," you are just building some feature. If slavery was still legal, you'd better fucking believe that the corporation that owned you would be suing other corporations over getting a percent of the revenue for some work you did. But alas, you are just a person, and as such you don't get to write laws and international trade agreements, so your contributions to a product aren't litigated over.

hlmencken 11y ago

I mean, this is what they agree to in order to keep making the product. This was a settlement and is what apple agreed to instead of having to discontinue the property theft and pay damages. consider this intellectual property in the way you would consider copyright, if i gave out an album but had stolen a song on it I could license the song and give the original artist a cut off the top or else i could be sued and give up my ability to keep distributing the album. It's not that this is up for grabs it's that this is what they are willing to give up to continue using ericsson's property and ameliorate previous damages.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

polskibus 11y ago

Standing on the shoulders of giants you sometimes have to pay them for what they did so far.

HiLo 11y ago
No, don't you get it? They clearly weren't giants if they couldn't do everything themselves, so it's okay if we don't do everything ourselves, not pay them, and make more money. (obviously kidding)
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

HiLo 11y ago

I couldn't disagree with you more. If you don't know HOW to build a multi-billion dollar product without stealing prior work that isn't yours, WHY should you be able to sledgehammer your way into lots of money by preventing somebody else from getting paid for what they did? Furthermore, a current lack of sufficient resources to pursue an idea does not mean that you never intend to do anything with it. The poster seems to think that the arbitrary amount of "a few years" discredits any prior work, as if it doesn't take people much longer periods of time to get their life in order and bring their life's work and ideas to fruition.

gozur88 11y ago
>If you don't know how to build a multi-billion dollar product without stealing prior work that isn't yours, WHY should you be able to sledgehammer your way into lots of money by preventing somebody else from getting paid for what they did? The assumption being, of course, that you actually stole prior work instead of coming up with the same idea. From what I can tell, most of the time these patents cover obvious stuff. A touch screen on a phone? Who would have thought of that? Everybody, actually. Everybody.
- HiLo 11y ago
  Patents are a bit more nuanced than "touch screen on a phone."
  - gozur88 11y ago
    It's been a long time since I saw a patent that wasn't a description of the most obvious way to do something. Where I work the company is trying to patent everything (mostly, I would hope for defensive reasons). I have patents in my name. And they're all written as broadly as the USPTO will accept, which is pretty damn broadly. The language is subtle, but in most cases the implications of the language are not subtle.
    - throwawaykf05 11y ago

smackfu 11y ago

Assume that to use a patent you pay a licensing fee. Assume that the licensing fee is a percentage of the selling price for the product (because only a fool is paid a percentage of profit.) Assume that someone does not license your patent, and uses it anyway. Why shouldn't the penalty be based on the licensing fee that was avoided? Is 0.5% really that outside the range of valid licensing fees?

jonknee 11y ago

> Heck, I give more credit to the tertiary industries such as the people delivering the iPhone packages to my door, than I do to any owner of a patent for a product that they didn't build. The iPhone would be shit if it wasn't for the advanced radio it uses that is based off of Ericsson's technology. There are lots of patents in the agreement and some may seem dodgy, but you can't deny that Ericsson had a huge hand in developing all the radio stuff that we just take for granted. Apple isn't part of the 3GPP and had nothing to do with inventing any part of 2G/3G/4G/LTE. Even Apple doesn't deny this, they just wanted a different royalty rate after their previous agreement with Ericsson expired.