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Perhaps someone who understands patents better can explain this quote to me: "According to intellectual property activist Florian Mueller, Apple is unlikely to
by blahedo 15y ago
Perhaps someone who understands patents better can explain this quote to me: "According to intellectual property activist Florian Mueller, Apple is unlikely to grant HTC a license for these patents and might make a damages claim."
My understanding was that a patent (unlike copyright, but like musical performances) was something you could not refuse to license, you could only extract a licensing fee. That being sort of the point of the inherent tradeoff of a patent—by making the blueprints public so anyone can use them, the gov't gives you a time-limited right to make money from anyone that uses that.
But the above quote would seem to contradict that. Can anyone explain?
- brk 15y agoThere is no requirement on what you must charge for a license. So, a $1,000,000 per handset "license" would be a perfectly valid offer, and obviously unlikely to be taken up by HTC.
- stewbrew 15y agoI'd say the license fee is limited by the costs of an alternative solution, isn't it.
- tsotha 15y agoThe fee has to be "reasonable", and in fact courts will step in when the patent holder is being demonstrably unreasonable, even going so far as to put the patent in the public domain. I'm not sure exactly how that translates into a dollar figure for license fees. But the patent holder certainly has an interest in at least appearing to work with potential licensees.
- brk 15y agoStill, "reasonable" can be widely interpreted, and take another many years to settle if the courts are involved. Applying a basic sniff test, if all patents had to be licensed for reasonable fees to competitors, there would be almost no sense in having patents in the first place. Additionally terms like "blocking patents" in terms of intellectual property barriers to entry in a marketplace would also likely not need to exist. IANAL, but I do believe from my own experience that Apple can effectively decide to not make their patents available to HTC if they so choose in this case.
- adamsmith 15y agoIANAL, but as far as I understand it, any given patent holder has exclusive rights to use its invention however it sees fit, including licensing the patent (e.g. patent trolls) or maintaining a monopoly. Some patent pools (e.g. MPEG LA) are set up so anyone can license the patents covered under either FRAND or RAND requirements, e.g. fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory, but participation in patent pools is entirely voluntary. In the case of H264 everyone agreed to these terms to boost adoption and the ultimate value of their patents.
- petegrif 15y agoI don't believe you do have license your patented IP unless you choose to do so and I would be interested to see evidence to the contrary.
- more_later 15y agoThe language of the patent is such that all browsers post 1996 will violate it. So, my questions: 1. Can Netscape (1994) be quoted as prior art? 2. Can an anti-trust case be made against Apple/MSFT etc if Apple does not bring these claims against MSFT? Because, one can claim that there is no other reason except to punish Android if no claims are brought against any of the other violators.
- petegrif 15y agoI think you have posted this in the wrong place. It has nothing to do with the point of this thread.
- petegrif 15y agoI have looked into this further to confirm my belief. You don't have to license your patented IP. This is well treated in: http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2011/07/what-does-5-buy-htc-from-apple-few.html http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2011/07/what-does-5-buy-htc-...