15 ms·

Qualcomm wins preliminary China import ruling against some iPhone models

126 points by tooltalk 8y ago

smitty1110 8y ago
"The court found Apple violated two of Qualcomm’s software patents around resizing photographs and managing applications on a touch screen." Well, that's not exactly the victory they wanted, but I think Qualcomm will take anything they can get at this point.
- Queenie_15 8y ago
  It's just one front among many in their battle. The idea is to make things difficult for Apple.
- izacus 8y ago
  It's the same type of patent Apple used against Samsung in US, so it's not like they're an innocent party in this dance.
  - smitty1110 8y ago
    I'm not saying they are (these type of patents suck), I'm just commenting on the fact that Qualcomm really want's a court ruling on LTE modems. They want to force Apple back to the negotiating table, and IMO this ruling isn't enough.
  - interesthrow2 8y ago
    2 wrongs don't make a right. Although the "swipe to unlock" patent case was ridiculous.
- bunnycorn 8y ago
  The most important thing is that it made into the headlines that and drove the AAPL stock down, and the QCOM stock up. - "Chinese Court Says Apple Infringed on Qualcomm Patents" New York times - "Apple Hit With Sales Ban on Older iPhones in China" Wall Street Journal - "China bans most iPhone sales after granting Qualcomm an injunction against Apple" CNN - "Apple Banned From China As A Result Of Battle With Qualcomm" Forbes - "Qualcomm Says It Won Case Banning Sale of Older iPhones in China" Bloomberg It's plain ridiculous and shows how much the press cares about the truth and how much Qualcomm and others are paying them to write misleading crap like that. In theory, Qualcomm banned iPhone sales in China. In practice, no. All phones that Apple is selling have the latest iOS 12, so it's plain wrong that they banned the sale of a single iPhone, old or new.
withhighprod 8y ago
Trade war disguised. Qualcomm got China’s back and likely win this time
mtgx 8y ago
In related news, Qualcomm seems to be shutting down its Centriq division, which China announces its own similar chips. Coincidence? https://www.theinformation.com/articles/qualcomm-lays-off-269-employees-in-data-center-business https://www.theinformation.com/articles/qualcomm-lays-off-26...? https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/12/10/qualcomm_layoffs/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/12/10/qualcomm_layoffs/ AMD made the same "devil's deal" with China, essentially giving away their IP for a small price. It's interesting how China is now basically telling foreign companies "We'll just take your IP and make your product ourselves here. Here take some change for it." I can only imagine this type of "deal" will continue to be made with other companies in the coming years. https://www.eweek.com/servers/china-s-hygon-unveils-x86-processors-based-on-amd-s-epyc-server-chip https://www.eweek.com/servers/china-s-hygon-unveils-x86-proc...
- velosol 8y ago
  The Economist has a brief piece in its current issue [1] that points at actions like that not being a coincidence but rather part of China's overall push to grow more technology at home. [1]: https://www.economist.com/leaders/2018/12/01/chip-wars-china-america-and-silicon-supremacy https://www.economist.com/leaders/2018/12/01/chip-wars-china...
dash2 8y ago
I wonder if this relates to the arrest of Huawei's CFO. Maybe someone who knows about the Chinese court system can say more.
- jimmydef 8y ago
  Highly likely to be unrelated. This is just one American company against another.
- BonesJustice 8y ago
  The suit was filed before the latest generation of iPhones was shipping (hence they are not affected), so it definitely predates the arrest.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
dis-sys 8y ago
Qualcomm got this win because of two patents relate to software. For their inventors, they are probably not working on Qualcomm's core business (licensing and modem), wondering what will happen to them? An email from their superiors saying "well done and thank you", a cash bonus maybe some extra RSU, a promotion or maybe nothing? Anyone has experience on this?
- entity345 8y ago
  Employees usually get RSUs when they get a patent filed and granted, and that's it.
  - dis-sys 8y ago
    For Qualcomm, it seems that you get $1500 USD when your patent is filed and another $1500 USD when granted. I guess one can pocket more rewards once your patent is proven to be more valuable to the company. The question is how much and in what form.
    - joshstrange 8y ago
      > I guess one can pocket more rewards once your patent is proven to be more valuable to the company. The question is how much and in what form. I doubt most companies are going to further compensate employees for this. And Qualcomm doesn't strike me as super loyal to their employees but I might be wrong.
- enraged_camel 8y ago
  No, they won because they wanted to retaliate against the USA arresting a top Huewei executive.
  - dis-sys 8y ago
    not every single thread on HN has to be politicized. Qualcomm picked these patents months ago, they filed a lawsuit by arguing that these patents are being used by Apple without licensing. This is enough to call these concerned patents "key patents". my post is all about a question I am interested in - what kind of reward a big name high tech company is going to reward you when you are the inventor of such key patents.
baybal2 8y ago
I remember when a noname oem from Shenzhen "won" a patent case against apple in 2014. They barely managed to enforce the ban in a single retail chain in Beijing, and then Apple simply switched to ifone 5, which was untouched by injunction.
ballenf 8y ago
So in some recent version of ios 12, Apple changed the way they resize photos and manage applications on screen to get around Qualcomm's patents. It would be fascinating to see just what features on which devices are missing due to patents as opposed to the manufacturer not wanting to do it. Sure, most of the time the features can be designed in a non-infringing way, but that takes additional resources that might make the feature have a worse cost-benefit to some other less user-friendly feature. At this point, it's really hard to see the public benefit of these types of software patents.
- eganist 8y ago
  That same argument could be levied against all patents more generally, and as a result, I don't think it really helps the anti-software-patent cause. Physical patents have been licensed for this reason (to avoid the r&d of alternative methods) since nearly the advent of patents.
  - konschubert 8y ago
    The hard thing in software is not idea, but execution. Patents that patent trivial ideas are nothing but roadblocks. Edit: There are some ideas in software that were non-obvious. Algorithms and protocols. Those might make sense to be patent-able.
    - monocasa 8y ago
      Algorithms should be the least patenable as math is explicitly not granted patent protections.
      - vetinari 8y ago
        Neither should be protocols; it is easy to come up with a new one, all that patenting one does is to prevent interoperability.
      - tfha 8y ago
        I thought math was explicitly not patentable
exabrial 8y ago
> Import Ban Why not just ship locally?
- seanmcdirmid 8y ago
  iPhones are made in Chinese special export zones (SEZ) that lack taxes on imported raw components and factory machinery. The flip side is that anything made in an SEZ must be “imported” back into China since the inputs themselves were technically not imported.
ihuman 8y ago
Is there any details on the patents Apple violated?
- whyfy 8y ago
  I haven't found actual specifics, but a quick search on Google Patents reveal that Qualcomm has a similar one for the image control/resizing. https://patents.google.com/patent/US20140306903A1/en?q=application&q=management&q=touchscreen&assignee=qualcomm&oq=qualcomm+application+management+touchscreen https://patents.google.com/patent/US20140306903A1/en?q=appli...
ksec 8y ago
Qualcomm CEO and CFO keep talking that they are at the door step of fixing what ever differences they have with Apple, and should be done by early 2019. And yet nothing on the table suggest Apple and Qualcomm could settle without long Court Battle. I kept thinking Qualcomm might have a Nuclear option that will force Apple to listen or at least talk into resolution. May be some software patents?
- ComputerGuru 8y ago
  > May be some software patents? No, because that’s what this is.
onetimemanytime 8y ago
IMO: Trade war Courts in China are not independent, let's be honest. Hurting Apple, the crown jewel, is a warning to USA (even if Qualcomm is US based) Edit: also see Huawei CFO getting jailed etc etc. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-05/huawei-cfo-arrested-in-canada-as-u-s-seeks-her-extradition https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-05/huawei-cf... China answered....with hundreds of billions in market cap for Apple.
- talloaktrees 8y ago
  Definitely can't rule it out as a factor.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- throwy67i4 8y ago
  And what if Qualcomm had lost this lawsuit? I’m sure there would be people saying, “This is a political move against an American company. No way would a Chinese judge rule in favor of an American company right now.”
  - onetimemanytime 8y ago
    apple can buy QCOM by lunch time so market cap is important. Next, a phantom firm worth $5 can sue MSFT in China
- kurtisc 8y ago
  >Courts in China are not independent, let's be honest. The USA has elected and appointed partisan judges!
  - DeonPenny 8y ago
    Whom has told the leader of that party donald trump on the national and state level to stuff it plenty of times.
yalogin 8y ago
China using American companies in their trade war. Ingenious.
- vkou 8y ago
  Given that Trump is taking credit for starting this trade war, I wouldn't call it 'their trade war.'
reaperducer 8y ago
I didn't see in the article where it was stated, does anyone know where these iPhones are being imported from? India?
dis-sys 8y ago
I realized that a Chinese court just acknowledged the fact that Qualcomm has a portfolio of patents not relate to modems and still widely used by many very popular phones. it seems to me that this actually gives Qualcomm extra justification to its policy of determining the licensing fee based on the cost of the whole phone rather than just the modem. sounds like a huge win for Qualcomm.
zackmorris 8y ago
Does anyone know if there is a software license that bans software patents? So for example if a large majority of open source projects adopted it on sites like GitHub, especially at the OS level, it would begin to squeeze out patented software. Maybe a clause for the ban could be added to the next version of the most commonly used software licenses. My personal feeling on software patents is that nearly all algorithms have an optimal solution and that nearly everyone will arrive at those solutions with a little elbow grease. So software patents stifle innovation rather than encourage it. The worst part is that anyone, anywhere, can be put out of business or tied up in court indefinitely by software patents (so they represent an infinite risk to any business). The same is true for all information technologies like genetics and pharmaceuticals. In fact I would go as far as to say that the number one danger facing machine learning and artificial intelligence (and work towards a general solution to the problems facing humanity) is software patents. I don't expect large corporations to make much progress in banning software patents, even when their failure to do so hurts their bottom lines like in this case with Apple and Qualcomm. The most we could hope for is a giant like Google to get such a large patent arsenal that they could act like a shield for member developers (via the threat of mutually assured destruction), or to reduce patent durations to something reasonable like 2-5 years. I don't want to start a flame war, but what are the holes in my logic above? Is this something that can be hacked or will it require years of political and legal battles? Do globalization and multinational issues make the situation hopeless?
- aey 8y ago
  Apache 2.0 is pretty good. If the licensee sues for any patent infringement they loose all Apache 2.0 licenses in that product. But it is hard to defend against trolls that are not shipping any code themselves.
  - zackmorris 8y ago
    Thanks I didn't know that. For those interested, here are the top 5 results I found from searching "apache 2 license software patent" on duckduckgo.com: https://opensource.com/article/18/2/how-make-sense-apache-2-patent-license https://opensource.com/article/18/2/how-make-sense-apache-2-... https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/1881/against-what-does-the-apache-2-0-patent-clause-protect https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/1881/against-... http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Patent_clauses_in_software_licences#Apache_License_2.0 http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Patent_clauses_in_software_licences... https://www.apache.org/licenses/GPL-compatibility.html https://www.apache.org/licenses/GPL-compatibility.html http://www.apache.org/foundation/license-faq.html http://www.apache.org/foundation/license-faq.html Edit: looks like Apache 2 is compatible with GPLv3 but only in one direction. So if an Apache 2 work is derived from a GPLv3 work then it must be distributed under GPLv3 as well. Personally I've always preferred the MIT license over the GPL because I feel that the emergent effects of the spread of free software are more important than any incentive to create free software, but I might switch to Apache 2 now. I wonder if there is any precedent from other cases where a company sued a competitor but the case was thrown out because the plaintiff was ruled to not really be a competitor (because it never sold anything).
majia 8y ago
If, in an alternative universe, the Chinese court rules in favor of Apple, China must be retaliating the US by green lighting the IP theft of Qualcomm.
dsabanin 8y ago
This looks like it could easily be a part of the retaliation for the arrest of the Huawei executive last week. Timing is pretty revealing and I have no doubt that Chinese courts, similar to Soviet courts, are completely subservient to the executive branch.
- karmasimida 8y ago
  This is a suit brought by another American company.
gaoshan 8y ago
China is grateful for Qualcomm and the timing of this. A case that was expected to be dismissed instead, in the wake of the Huawei arrest, becomes a tool.
- megy 8y ago
  Not sure how two US companies dueling it out helps China?
  - stirlo 8y ago
    Sends a message to the US that their companies can be blocked/disrupted just like the US is doing to Huawei. Actually a bonus to not have to be directly linked to a Chinese company that the US can complain about.
  - gaoshan 8y ago
    Qualcomm brought the case in China. This give China an opening to put punitive measures in place against an American company. In the aftermath of the detention of Huawei's CFO this is a great opportunity because it isn't China acting unilaterally, it is them acting in response to a legal challenge brought by an American company. Literally as win/win as it gets from China's perspective.
    - DeonPenny 8y ago
      But this is why america wants. A fair legal and judicial system that looks at cases equally. Not to mention if it was this it could make Apple move factories out of china and into vietnam and other markets.
    - freeflight 8y ago
      Yup, that's pretty much also my take on this. It's weird how barely anybody else seems to see these connections and instead prefer to see this as completely independent from the current US-China disputes.
patfla 8y ago
Tit for tat. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/michael-kovrig-former-canadian-diplomat-reportedly-arrested-in-china-2018-12-11/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/michael-kovrig-former-canadian-...

126 points by tooltalk 8y ago

"The court found Apple violated two of Qualcomm’s software patents around resizing photographs and managing applications on a touch screen." Well, that's not exactly the victory they wanted, but I think Qualcomm will take anything they can get at this point.

Queenie_15 8y ago
It's just one front among many in their battle. The idea is to make things difficult for Apple.
izacus 8y ago
It's the same type of patent Apple used against Samsung in US, so it's not like they're an innocent party in this dance.
- smitty1110 8y ago
  I'm not saying they are (these type of patents suck), I'm just commenting on the fact that Qualcomm really want's a court ruling on LTE modems. They want to force Apple back to the negotiating table, and IMO this ruling isn't enough.
- interesthrow2 8y ago
  2 wrongs don't make a right. Although the "swipe to unlock" patent case was ridiculous.
bunnycorn 8y ago
The most important thing is that it made into the headlines that and drove the AAPL stock down, and the QCOM stock up. - "Chinese Court Says Apple Infringed on Qualcomm Patents" New York times - "Apple Hit With Sales Ban on Older iPhones in China" Wall Street Journal - "China bans most iPhone sales after granting Qualcomm an injunction against Apple" CNN - "Apple Banned From China As A Result Of Battle With Qualcomm" Forbes - "Qualcomm Says It Won Case Banning Sale of Older iPhones in China" Bloomberg It's plain ridiculous and shows how much the press cares about the truth and how much Qualcomm and others are paying them to write misleading crap like that. In theory, Qualcomm banned iPhone sales in China. In practice, no. All phones that Apple is selling have the latest iOS 12, so it's plain wrong that they banned the sale of a single iPhone, old or new.

withhighprod 8y ago

Trade war disguised. Qualcomm got China’s back and likely win this time

mtgx 8y ago

In related news, Qualcomm seems to be shutting down its Centriq division, which China announces its own similar chips. Coincidence? https://www.theinformation.com/articles/qualcomm-lays-off-269-employees-in-data-center-business https://www.theinformation.com/articles/qualcomm-lays-off-26...? https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/12/10/qualcomm_layoffs/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/12/10/qualcomm_layoffs/ AMD made the same "devil's deal" with China, essentially giving away their IP for a small price. It's interesting how China is now basically telling foreign companies "We'll just take your IP and make your product ourselves here. Here take some change for it." I can only imagine this type of "deal" will continue to be made with other companies in the coming years. https://www.eweek.com/servers/china-s-hygon-unveils-x86-processors-based-on-amd-s-epyc-server-chip https://www.eweek.com/servers/china-s-hygon-unveils-x86-proc...

velosol 8y ago
The Economist has a brief piece in its current issue [1] that points at actions like that not being a coincidence but rather part of China's overall push to grow more technology at home. [1]: https://www.economist.com/leaders/2018/12/01/chip-wars-china-america-and-silicon-supremacy https://www.economist.com/leaders/2018/12/01/chip-wars-china...

dash2 8y ago

I wonder if this relates to the arrest of Huawei's CFO. Maybe someone who knows about the Chinese court system can say more.

jimmydef 8y ago
Highly likely to be unrelated. This is just one American company against another.
BonesJustice 8y ago
The suit was filed before the latest generation of iPhones was shipping (hence they are not affected), so it definitely predates the arrest.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

dis-sys 8y ago

Qualcomm got this win because of two patents relate to software. For their inventors, they are probably not working on Qualcomm's core business (licensing and modem), wondering what will happen to them? An email from their superiors saying "well done and thank you", a cash bonus maybe some extra RSU, a promotion or maybe nothing? Anyone has experience on this?

entity345 8y ago
Employees usually get RSUs when they get a patent filed and granted, and that's it.
- dis-sys 8y ago
  For Qualcomm, it seems that you get $1500 USD when your patent is filed and another $1500 USD when granted. I guess one can pocket more rewards once your patent is proven to be more valuable to the company. The question is how much and in what form.
  - joshstrange 8y ago
    > I guess one can pocket more rewards once your patent is proven to be more valuable to the company. The question is how much and in what form. I doubt most companies are going to further compensate employees for this. And Qualcomm doesn't strike me as super loyal to their employees but I might be wrong.
enraged_camel 8y ago
No, they won because they wanted to retaliate against the USA arresting a top Huewei executive.
- dis-sys 8y ago
  not every single thread on HN has to be politicized. Qualcomm picked these patents months ago, they filed a lawsuit by arguing that these patents are being used by Apple without licensing. This is enough to call these concerned patents "key patents". my post is all about a question I am interested in - what kind of reward a big name high tech company is going to reward you when you are the inventor of such key patents.

baybal2 8y ago

I remember when a noname oem from Shenzhen "won" a patent case against apple in 2014. They barely managed to enforce the ban in a single retail chain in Beijing, and then Apple simply switched to ifone 5, which was untouched by injunction.

ballenf 8y ago

So in some recent version of ios 12, Apple changed the way they resize photos and manage applications on screen to get around Qualcomm's patents. It would be fascinating to see just what features on which devices are missing due to patents as opposed to the manufacturer not wanting to do it. Sure, most of the time the features can be designed in a non-infringing way, but that takes additional resources that might make the feature have a worse cost-benefit to some other less user-friendly feature. At this point, it's really hard to see the public benefit of these types of software patents.

eganist 8y ago
That same argument could be levied against all patents more generally, and as a result, I don't think it really helps the anti-software-patent cause. Physical patents have been licensed for this reason (to avoid the r&d of alternative methods) since nearly the advent of patents.
- konschubert 8y ago
  The hard thing in software is not idea, but execution. Patents that patent trivial ideas are nothing but roadblocks. Edit: There are some ideas in software that were non-obvious. Algorithms and protocols. Those might make sense to be patent-able.
  - monocasa 8y ago
    Algorithms should be the least patenable as math is explicitly not granted patent protections.
    - vetinari 8y ago
      Neither should be protocols; it is easy to come up with a new one, all that patenting one does is to prevent interoperability.
    - tfha 8y ago
      I thought math was explicitly not patentable

exabrial 8y ago

> Import Ban Why not just ship locally?

seanmcdirmid 8y ago
iPhones are made in Chinese special export zones (SEZ) that lack taxes on imported raw components and factory machinery. The flip side is that anything made in an SEZ must be “imported” back into China since the inputs themselves were technically not imported.

ihuman 8y ago

Is there any details on the patents Apple violated?

whyfy 8y ago
I haven't found actual specifics, but a quick search on Google Patents reveal that Qualcomm has a similar one for the image control/resizing. https://patents.google.com/patent/US20140306903A1/en?q=application&q=management&q=touchscreen&assignee=qualcomm&oq=qualcomm+application+management+touchscreen https://patents.google.com/patent/US20140306903A1/en?q=appli...

ksec 8y ago

Qualcomm CEO and CFO keep talking that they are at the door step of fixing what ever differences they have with Apple, and should be done by early 2019. And yet nothing on the table suggest Apple and Qualcomm could settle without long Court Battle. I kept thinking Qualcomm might have a Nuclear option that will force Apple to listen or at least talk into resolution. May be some software patents?

ComputerGuru 8y ago
> May be some software patents? No, because that’s what this is.

onetimemanytime 8y ago

IMO: Trade war Courts in China are not independent, let's be honest. Hurting Apple, the crown jewel, is a warning to USA (even if Qualcomm is US based) Edit: also see Huawei CFO getting jailed etc etc. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-05/huawei-cfo-arrested-in-canada-as-u-s-seeks-her-extradition https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-05/huawei-cf... China answered....with hundreds of billions in market cap for Apple.

talloaktrees 8y ago
Definitely can't rule it out as a factor.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
throwy67i4 8y ago
And what if Qualcomm had lost this lawsuit? I’m sure there would be people saying, “This is a political move against an American company. No way would a Chinese judge rule in favor of an American company right now.”
- onetimemanytime 8y ago
  apple can buy QCOM by lunch time so market cap is important. Next, a phantom firm worth $5 can sue MSFT in China
kurtisc 8y ago
>Courts in China are not independent, let's be honest. The USA has elected and appointed partisan judges!
- DeonPenny 8y ago
  Whom has told the leader of that party donald trump on the national and state level to stuff it plenty of times.

yalogin 8y ago

China using American companies in their trade war. Ingenious.

vkou 8y ago
Given that Trump is taking credit for starting this trade war, I wouldn't call it 'their trade war.'

reaperducer 8y ago

I didn't see in the article where it was stated, does anyone know where these iPhones are being imported from? India?

dis-sys 8y ago

I realized that a Chinese court just acknowledged the fact that Qualcomm has a portfolio of patents not relate to modems and still widely used by many very popular phones. it seems to me that this actually gives Qualcomm extra justification to its policy of determining the licensing fee based on the cost of the whole phone rather than just the modem. sounds like a huge win for Qualcomm.

zackmorris 8y ago

Does anyone know if there is a software license that bans software patents? So for example if a large majority of open source projects adopted it on sites like GitHub, especially at the OS level, it would begin to squeeze out patented software. Maybe a clause for the ban could be added to the next version of the most commonly used software licenses. My personal feeling on software patents is that nearly all algorithms have an optimal solution and that nearly everyone will arrive at those solutions with a little elbow grease. So software patents stifle innovation rather than encourage it. The worst part is that anyone, anywhere, can be put out of business or tied up in court indefinitely by software patents (so they represent an infinite risk to any business). The same is true for all information technologies like genetics and pharmaceuticals. In fact I would go as far as to say that the number one danger facing machine learning and artificial intelligence (and work towards a general solution to the problems facing humanity) is software patents. I don't expect large corporations to make much progress in banning software patents, even when their failure to do so hurts their bottom lines like in this case with Apple and Qualcomm. The most we could hope for is a giant like Google to get such a large patent arsenal that they could act like a shield for member developers (via the threat of mutually assured destruction), or to reduce patent durations to something reasonable like 2-5 years. I don't want to start a flame war, but what are the holes in my logic above? Is this something that can be hacked or will it require years of political and legal battles? Do globalization and multinational issues make the situation hopeless?

aey 8y ago
Apache 2.0 is pretty good. If the licensee sues for any patent infringement they loose all Apache 2.0 licenses in that product. But it is hard to defend against trolls that are not shipping any code themselves.
- zackmorris 8y ago
  Thanks I didn't know that. For those interested, here are the top 5 results I found from searching "apache 2 license software patent" on duckduckgo.com: https://opensource.com/article/18/2/how-make-sense-apache-2-patent-license https://opensource.com/article/18/2/how-make-sense-apache-2-... https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/1881/against-what-does-the-apache-2-0-patent-clause-protect https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/1881/against-... http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Patent_clauses_in_software_licences#Apache_License_2.0 http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Patent_clauses_in_software_licences... https://www.apache.org/licenses/GPL-compatibility.html https://www.apache.org/licenses/GPL-compatibility.html http://www.apache.org/foundation/license-faq.html http://www.apache.org/foundation/license-faq.html Edit: looks like Apache 2 is compatible with GPLv3 but only in one direction. So if an Apache 2 work is derived from a GPLv3 work then it must be distributed under GPLv3 as well. Personally I've always preferred the MIT license over the GPL because I feel that the emergent effects of the spread of free software are more important than any incentive to create free software, but I might switch to Apache 2 now. I wonder if there is any precedent from other cases where a company sued a competitor but the case was thrown out because the plaintiff was ruled to not really be a competitor (because it never sold anything).

majia 8y ago

If, in an alternative universe, the Chinese court rules in favor of Apple, China must be retaliating the US by green lighting the IP theft of Qualcomm.

dsabanin 8y ago

This looks like it could easily be a part of the retaliation for the arrest of the Huawei executive last week. Timing is pretty revealing and I have no doubt that Chinese courts, similar to Soviet courts, are completely subservient to the executive branch.

karmasimida 8y ago
This is a suit brought by another American company.

gaoshan 8y ago

China is grateful for Qualcomm and the timing of this. A case that was expected to be dismissed instead, in the wake of the Huawei arrest, becomes a tool.

megy 8y ago
Not sure how two US companies dueling it out helps China?
- stirlo 8y ago
  Sends a message to the US that their companies can be blocked/disrupted just like the US is doing to Huawei. Actually a bonus to not have to be directly linked to a Chinese company that the US can complain about.
- gaoshan 8y ago
  Qualcomm brought the case in China. This give China an opening to put punitive measures in place against an American company. In the aftermath of the detention of Huawei's CFO this is a great opportunity because it isn't China acting unilaterally, it is them acting in response to a legal challenge brought by an American company. Literally as win/win as it gets from China's perspective.
  - DeonPenny 8y ago
    But this is why america wants. A fair legal and judicial system that looks at cases equally. Not to mention if it was this it could make Apple move factories out of china and into vietnam and other markets.
  - freeflight 8y ago
    Yup, that's pretty much also my take on this. It's weird how barely anybody else seems to see these connections and instead prefer to see this as completely independent from the current US-China disputes.

patfla 8y ago

Tit for tat. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/michael-kovrig-former-canadian-diplomat-reportedly-arrested-in-china-2018-12-11/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/michael-kovrig-former-canadian-...