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Qualcomm says Apple is $7B behind in royalty payments
- neonate 8y agohttps://outline.com/DHJaLL https://outline.com/DHJaLL
- comboy 8y agoOT, it's useful sometimes, but is outline legal? I mean, whatever the purpose it looks like stealing somebody's else content.
- tyingq 8y agoI always wondered how Pinterest skirted this issue.
- freehunter 8y agoPinterest says "don't upload things you don't own" and when a copyright holder complains they take it down. So is it legal for Outline to offer this service? Sure, if they comply. Is it legal for users to use it like this? Probably not.
- tux1968 8y agoSince you're in the mood to speculate on legal matters, in which legal jurisdiction is it likely illegal for users to do this? All of them? What if you're sailing in international waters at the time of your post?
- alain94040 8y agoWhat flag does your boat fly? http://www.hri.org/docs/LOS/part7-1a.html http://www.hri.org/docs/LOS/part7-1a.html
- tzs 8y agoAs a first approximation, I'd guess the 176 countries or other entities [1] that are parties to the Berne Convention. Parties can have exceptions and limitations to the rights from Berne, so it is not necessarily illegal in all of them, but I'd expect it is in a large fraction of them. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention#/media/File:Berne_Convention_signatories.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention#/media/File:B...
- nurino 8y agoOutline has a DMCA link...
- fouc 8y agohow come no one complains when it's an archive.is/ link?
- tyingq 8y agoIceland based hosting is often suggested for sites with potential copyright issues because of their freedom of speech laws. No idea if that's actually true, but it is used as a selling point. See https://www.orangewebsite.com/articles/freedom-of-speech-amendment/ https://www.orangewebsite.com/articles/freedom-of-speech-ame... for one example.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- drb91 8y agoDMCA Safe Harbor is the term you’re looking for.
- Guest9812398 8y ago"Outline is for reading pages that: * you own the rights to, * is in the public domain, * constitutes fair use, or * you have consent of the copyright holder." They claim their site is for the above, and people can submit a notice to have content removed that doesn't fit that description. However, the reality is they want people to post and share content from other sites, and they'll happily remove their advertising, and add their own. I searched site:outline.com on Google, because I wanted to see for myself what people are sharing, and if I might be mistaken. The first result was this article... https://www.outline.com/vF4aGL https://www.outline.com/vF4aGL The source is The Free Thought Project. Hmm, I thought maybe this is some type of public domain news source, so I visit them. Nope, they're not. When I visited The Free Thought Project, I instantly get a popup saying, "Thanks to a coordinated attack on independent media by the establishment, this website is at risk of shutting down due to our ads being pulled and our social media pages entirely deleted. We need your help to survive, click below to see how you can make sure we stay around." This is the first Google result for an Outline article, and the company being stolen from has a popup that literally says they're struggling to stay afloat. I haven't previously heard of Outline, but that is definitely a disgusting business model.
- JumpCrisscross 8y agoAlmost every comment by this user is a shortened link [1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=neonate https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=neonate
- jrockway 8y agoWhen Apple owes you $7 in royalties, that's Apple's problem. When Apple owes you $7,000,000,000 in royalties, that's your problem.
- cptskippy 8y agoWith royalties no physical goods are trading hands and the theif can continue to use/make the thing upon which royalties are owed until such time as a legal injunction stops them. So it's very easy for Qualcomm to say "hey you owe us money" and for Apple to say "nuh uh" and then stall negotiations or legal proceedings for years. If Qualcomm proves victorious in a lawsuit there I always appeals and at the same time Apple can argue down damages. It's highly unlikely that Qualcomm would ever recoup the claimed amount or all of its legal fees. Because of this most lawsuits alledge ridiculous damages so that when they're reduced they fall closer to what is actually owed.
- akiselev 8y agoApple's argument for not paying is that the royalties are for patent licenses which they have an implicit right to. They purchase Intel's radios and due to patent exhaustion, they have a right to those patents for use of the radio (since Intel has already paid those license fees).
- nwmcsween 8y agoMy understanding is its Apple's designs and Intel just manufactures Apple's designs which infringes on Qualcoms patents, this is a very dangerous game to play.
- sjwright 8y agoThat’s an interesting assertion, one that definitely requires a citation. Even if Intel is only making these chips because of Apple, the real test is whether or not Intel is offering these chips to other companies. I would be surprised if they weren’t, even if nobody else is actually buying them. After all, if you’re a smaller player, why would you buy anything other then Qualcomm? It takes a big, assertive company like Apple to play these games.
- theDoug 8y agoFor perspective, $7Bn is 1.25x Qualcomm's quarterly revenue. This is a big gap. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/25/qualcomm-earnings-q3-2018.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/25/qualcomm-earnings-q3-2018.ht...
- megaremote 8y agoExcept $7bn isn't for one quarter, it is for almost 2 years now.
- paulddraper 8y ago15% is still a big gap.
- drb91 8y ago> They’re trying to destroy our business," Qualcomm lawyer Evan Chesler said at a hearing Friday in federal court in San Diego. If only they would succeed!
- maccio92 8y agoWhy do you want Qualcomm to fail?
- drb91 8y agoThey abuse the patent system like many large tech companies. I was being facetious, admittedly.
- StudentStuff 8y agoQualcomm has bullied players like Samsung to prevent them from using their own LTE modems, and has done everything possible to ensure they are the only reasonable choice for LTE chipsets. In Samsung's case, only Samsung branded devices can have their LTE modem per the settlement with Qualcomm, and US bound phones always ship with a Qualcomm SoC (part of that whole home territory thing for Qualcomm). Another affected group is Mediatek, they only recently got LTE support, and their ability to get chips with LTE is entirely controlled by Qualcomm. There is no competition in the modem space, which is absolutely appalling.
- gliderecord 8y agoBecause they were the inventors of 4G LTE.
- monocasa 8y agoSo? They have to make the patents available under FRAND terms in order for it to have become 4G, but are clearly not.
- selectodude 8y agoNo they weren’t. NTT DoCoMo and Ericsson did the heavy lifting on it. Qualcomm owns patents on OFDM that they received when they bought Flarion in 2006. They saw an ability to corner the patent market like they did for CDMA and took it.
- nimbius 8y agospeaking from experience I can relate. As an automotive mechanic by trade I once won $11,000 at a Keno machine in a bar. As you can imagine I was super excited to put this to a new set of boots, and a new set of welding gloves. Now seven billion dollars is a far cry from Keno money but let me just offer a bit of advice. If your cousin with the SCRAM anklet breaks into your garage at 5 PM and insists you owe him a bench grinder with your newfound wealth, you may wish to politely decline. Im sure being fingered as the first trillion dollar company has nothing to do with being asked to pay child supp--er, Qualcomm royalties.
- bredren 8y agoHuh?
- dlivingston 8y agoI think he/she is making an analogy between his life experience and the claim against Apple. That is, 'I [won/built a business worth] a lot of money. [Family/other companies] suddenly felt I owed them something. You should refuse as they are only seeing dollar signs.'
- madrox 8y agoYou good bro?
- PhilWright 8y agoIf your spending $11,000 on boots and welding gloves, your getting a very bad price. Shop around.
- microtherion 8y agoThey're still looking for a sufficiently large truck to repossess Apple Park...
- cronix 8y agoGet an injunction to prevent Apple from selling their products with stolen Qualcomm tech until they pay. I mean, it's stolen if they didn't pay for it, right? You know, just like Apple does to companies like Samsung who they claim use stolen Apple IP. https://www.mercurynews.com/2015/09/17/apple-v-samsung-samsung-slapped-with-injunction/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2015/09/17/apple-v-samsung-samsu...
- gehsty 8y agoIf they think they are correct stopping Apple selling products would have a huge negative effect on their royalty collection, they need to walk a line that does not impact revenue but does not undermine their belief that Apple are wrong.
- cronix 8y agoI'm not in this business so I don't know the answer to this. Does Apple only have to pay Qualcomm a royalty for sold devices, or manufactured devices? To me, it seems it should be for the quantity of manufactured devices since the tech is in the phone regardless of whether it has been sold or not.
- mygo 8y agoThat should be up to Qualcomm how they price their royalties / construct their payment agreements
- azhenley 8y agoWould it ever be worthwhile to do this as a means of devaluing a company so that you could purchase it? In this case, if Apple wanted to buy Qualcomm, would this be an effective means of reducing their valuation?
- MR4D 8y agoA means, yes. Effective, probably not. Existing Qualcomm shareholders would probably sue the heck out of them during the merger, and it would be difficult to close, raising the overall cost.
- yayana 8y agoMaybe, but not for Apple, who could be in for a world of regulatory hurt if they owned a monopoly in the cell phone stack. Apple wants to commoditize their complement to take the most profits for each finished device. This is why the quote from their lawyer is to not let Qualcomm walk away from Apple presenting a challenge to their patent legitimacy. https://www.gwern.net/Complement#2 https://www.gwern.net/Complement#2
- wyldfire 8y agoApple isn't doing this because they want to acquire Qualcomm. They don't like having their biggest competitor in their supply chain but there's few viable modem vendors.
- vlozko 8y agoI doubt it would pass antitrust review were that the case. Qualcomm is the only viable US market chip company that high-end phones can use. All the existing patents and agreements don’t go away if it were to be acquired.
- wyldfire 8y agoMaybe you misunderstood my comment, here's some additional context for what I wrote: (1) Apple competes with Qualcomm today (indirectly via many vendors who ship snapdragon-based phones). (2) Apple is pretty good at supply chain controls. (3) Apple uses [until recent designs] Qualcomm modems in their iphone/ipad.
- fouc 8y ago>Apple argues that Qualcomm is using its intellectual property to bully customers into paying excessive royalties even as it tries to duck scrutiny over whether its patents are valid. “You can’t just let Qualcomm walk away from this,” Apple’s lawyer, Ruffin Cordell, told the judge at Friday’s hearing.
- kevin_thibedeau 8y agoQualcomm did all of the groundwork to develop CDMA. No way are all of the applicable patents invalid. Seems like Apple dropped the ball on this one.
- btian 8y agoCDMA parents have probably all expired since it's over 20 years old.
- kevin_thibedeau 8y agoThe original ones, but I will bet that there are follow on patents that still apply.
- josteink 8y agoBut nobody uses CDMA anymore except for some fringe, legacy operators. Everyone else is on the GSM, UMTS and LTE bandwagon.
- batiudrami 8y agoVerizon still operates a legacy CDMA network which iPhones are compatible with, no? Or are newer models now only compatible with their LTE network?
- merb 8y agonot all iphones are compatible, tough. List is here: https://www.apple.com/iphone/LTE/ https://www.apple.com/iphone/LTE/ i.e. for america there are special models that support cdma, but most countries do not need that.
- GeekyBear 8y agoThe article doesn't really mention the argument that Apple is making in court. They are seeking a judgement based on the legal concept of patent exhaustion. https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exhaustion_doctrine_under_U.S._law https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exhaustion_doctrine_under_U.S... If Apple buys a cellular modem from Intel, for instance, and Intel has already paid Qualcomm to use their standards essential parents to manufacture those cell phone modems, then patent exhaustion holds that Qualcomm cannot force Intel's customers to pay to license those patents all over again. Until a judge rules on this, you really can't say that Apple owes Qualcomm anywhere near that figure. There is more information on the FOSS patent blog: http://www.fosspatents.com/2018/10/patent-exhaustion-keeps-qualcomm-on-run.html http://www.fosspatents.com/2018/10/patent-exhaustion-keeps-q... Edit: I think this FOSS patent blog entry from last month does a better job of laying out the basic issues. http://www.fosspatents.com/2018/09/apple-foxconn-et-al-want-to-end.html http://www.fosspatents.com/2018/09/apple-foxconn-et-al-want-...
- ngngngng 8y agoI'm really losing faith in bloomberg. That's a huge detail to leave out of a story like this.
- akvadrako 8y agoBloomberg reporters have a incentives model¹ which encourages incorrect stories. This isn't the only example; they still haven't retracted the supermicro hardware hack story even though there is no evidence and it's denied by all the parties. [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/bloomberg-reporters-compensation-2013-12/?IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/bloomberg-reporters-compensa...
- siruncledrew 8y agoJeez. This type of false narrative creation (especially impacting financial markets) seems like it should be illegal. With journalistic integrity out the window for the sake of attracting an audience, I could imagine why some group of traders would want to intentionally feed Bloomberg false information or "nudge" them to publish a story knowing they could significantly profit from the resulting reaction.
- NotAmazin 8y agoapple should definitely reconsider itself, if true it is very unethical for this company to simply give out code it doesn't have a right to share. It would simply be that apple has to pay the fee and a fine.
- umvi 8y agoQualcomm is such an annoying company to work with. They are rapidly turning into rent-seeking trolls (I've heard co-workers joke that Qualcomm is a law firm with a few engineers)
- bgorman 8y agoQualcomm is the Oracle of hardware companies
- pentae 8y agoReminds me of a certain company who runs the most profitable smart phone app store. Except Qualcomm ask for only 5% per device.
- ksec 8y agoWell not really a fair comparison, Qualcomm is only part of the 3GPP patents profile, and LTE is only part of the iPhone package function. Not to mention 5% is equal or more to all other 3GPP patents cost combined. Having said that, looking at Samsung, Mediatek, CEVA IPs, Intel Modem, so far it seems Qualcomm's baseband and IPs is actually quite value for money in terms of performance and cost.
- wnevets 8y agoApple complaining about others abusing patents always makes me laugh
- eletious 8y agoDidn't they patent the corners on iPads and iPhones? Just a rumour that I've heard as a reason we couldn't get parts a few years back, but still.
- gumby 8y agoA design patent and a utility patent are utterly different things; about the only thing they have in common is the trace of the Elizabethan term "Letters Patent". Q'comm is asserting that Apple isn't paying for utility patents.
- wyldfire 8y agoApparently the royalty terms predate Apple's entry into the marketplace! I was pretty surprised to learn that Apple's manufacturers are the ones [still] paying this royalty that existed before the first iPhone.
- RickSanchez2600 8y agoApple should have dealt with Qualcomm when they first started to make a smart phone and wanted to base it on the Apple Newton: https://myapplenewton.blogspot.com/2013/01/qualcomm-newton-could-have-been-first.html https://myapplenewton.blogspot.com/2013/01/qualcomm-newton-c... Apple could then patent the Newton IP for Qualcomm to use and Qualcomm would pay Apple for it.