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And where would you go if you were to boycott Apple over the actions you deem to be "abusing the broken US patent system". I think Google/Motorola and Samsung

And where would you go if you were to boycott Apple over the actions you deem to be "abusing the broken US patent system". I think Google/Motorola and Samsung have behaved far worse when they attempted to obtain injuctions and excessive licensing fees over patents that they had committed to license on FRAND terms. Microsoft has a horrible history of anticompetive behavior. Maybe Blackberry phone and linux based computer would be an acceptable route although I'm not sure how long Blackberry will be making competitive products and there is a fairly limited choice of PCs shipping without Windows.

Tyrannosaurs 13y ago
That would be BlackBerry whose current value is largely in the patents they hold...
- josephlord 13y ago
  Yeah, but I haven't seen that many accusations of Blackberry "abusing" them. If that does rule them out it makes it really hard to see what a good choice would be if you are boycotting Apple over their patent (ab)use. I guess Firefox OS or something like that if you could find the right manufacturer but your choice is getting really quite slim.
kondor6c 13y ago
As far as phones go, perhaps FirefoxOS when it matures more. Too bad the OpenMoko project never picked up enough speed. If that really doesn't work, then there are several attempts to use a pure ASOP on other phones like the HTC One or something like that.
Prefinem 13y ago
You may think that Google and Samsung are worse because of FRAND, but the fact is that Apple by its very nature is more dangerous because of their closed system. If Google wins a patent, with it's open source AOSP, then guess what, anyone can use it. If Apple wins a patent, guess what, everyone has to pay for it. This is horrible for users and businesses and is evil in nature. As for Samsung, they are fighting back against Apple for the most part, and do so however they can.
- gibwell 13y ago
  Sadly not true. Google is moving most new Android development into tightly controlled closed source: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/10/googles-iron-grip-on-android-controlling-open-source-by-any-means-necessary/ http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/10/googles-iron-grip-on-... And portraying Samsung as the victim is absurd, they are one of the worlds most aggressive companies.
  - Prefinem 13y ago
    I know Google is, because they have open sourced it for so long, competitors have taken and used it... Now they are trying to reap some rewards. But it won't matter since it has been open sourced the way it has... How many different ROMS are there now based off of AOSP? Hundreds Samsung is not a victim, they are battling just as hard as Apple, but Apple, because of how vehemently they have attached Google and Samsung, they are the bad guys. People defend them because they are blinded by some infatuation that makes no sense to me and most other, level headed people. And before you say I am an Apple hater, I have purchased multiple Apple products (mostly to evaluate compared to other products). I have owned every type of iPhone except for the new 5 series. I have had a mac, I have had iPods, etc etc... I was never satisfied with their price point for what I got. But, as a company, they disgust me. Anyone who wants to defend them can go for it.
    - gibwell 13y ago
      Cloning other people's products and then dumping them onto the market using predatory pricing is a far more 'vehement' attack than anything Apple has done. If you seriously believe Samsung is a more ethical company than Apple, then we need discuss this no longer.
      - Prefinem 13y ago
        Ethical and evil are two different words with two different meanings. And, if I can make the same thing you can for cheaper, then why shouldn't I? Your problem is that you value "ingenuity" as something that can be stolen or ripped off which is wrong. You can't protect ideas. Everyone has them. Why should yours be more valuable then mine. Just because you say yours first? Even when I may have been working on my without anyone knowing? Or maybe you think, taking the risk of making something (i.e. the iphone) and since you took that risk, you should be rewarded by not allowing anyone else to make one. Because life if fair right? If you created the first product, make the product better than others, and offer at a reasonable price, then there is no reason you shouldn't be successful. If apple didn't have patents, they would fail, why, because their products would be too expensive to compete with other "clones". Now, if they actually made a better product, then they would at least exist (if their "better" product was worth the cost). Think about the guys that started a business building normal pc's and putting OS X on them. Apple forcibly shut them down fast because they new people would flock to them. Why, because they were much cheaper and would do the same thing as a Mac. And yet, Apple forced the business to shut down so that they would own their market. That is evil. Your stance make me believe that either, a) you are an Apple lover and thus overriding basic logic because you are blinded, b) don't understand the underlying points c) just trying to argue. Your ultimatum of "If you don't believe Samsung is as evil as Apple then I won't talk to you" is childish, immature and extremely bias. I believe Samsung is a better company than Apple. That is my own personal opinion, and I don't care whether you believe it or not. Patents do not protect anyone accept the greedy corporation that files them. They stifle innovation and hurt everyone but themselves. Apple is the king of patents and thus, the worst.
acjohnson55 13y ago
I think it would be fair to say that Microsoft's bad behavior earned it an absolutely crap reputation amongst many in the tech community, and that negativity may have played a role in the rise of adoption of Apple products and Google services. I will have to look into this FRAND issue. Do you have any good links?
- josephlord 13y ago
  I know many here dislike him but Florian' blog is largely fact based and has an understanding of how patents actually work unlike much of the media: Latest relevant one and a couple of others on topic but I haven't had time to review it all for the best ones: http://www.fosspatents.com/2013/10/eu-commission-market-tests-totally.html http://www.fosspatents.com/2013/10/eu-commission-market-test... http://www.fosspatents.com/2012/12/samsung-drops-all-requests-for.html http://www.fosspatents.com/2012/12/samsung-drops-all-request... http://www.fosspatents.com/2013/07/motorolas-royalty-demand-from-microsoft.html http://www.fosspatents.com/2013/07/motorolas-royalty-demand-... I don't always agree with Florian's opinions (although I'm not usually that far off) but his facts are usually solid. Groklaw also had coverage but was often really quite disappointing when it moved beyond the SCO case. There seemed very much a Google good Apple bad, patents bad, FRAND patents not quite as bad when they are being used on people we don't like attitude. There are probably some good comments on some HN discussions although many people seem to be under a mistaken impression that standards essential patents are better and more inventive than others when commonly the reverse is true. My summary: Standards are a bit like laws and sausages - you don't want to see how they are made. Standards bodies are groups of competitors meeting in a room to set terms of business going forwards which without a signficant number of rules (including the declaration and FRAND licensing commitment of related patents) would be illegal under anti-trust/competition law. Often with a standard like a codec there are many ways to implement each part of the process e.g. transforming, filtering, compressing, encoding.... Many of these approaches will have similar performance or perform well in different scenarios, many will also be patented. Companies want their patents included as (whether they are good or bad patents) anyone can work around them if they aren't included in the standard so they would get no royalties for them. If included they will get a very small slice of a big pie. Horse trading goes on in addition to the inclusion of technologies on pure merit (we will vote for your filtering approach and you can vote for our encoding approach). Everyone both wants a good standard that people will use and to get as many patents in as possible. If a company has a patent that they don't want to license under the terms of the standards organisation (often very vague) they could declare that and the standard would be developed avoiding the technology (or potentially abandoned). Patents In principle a patent gives you the exclusive right to implement and/or license the technology and no-one should import/produce or distribute infringing technology without your permission. In practice many granted are invalid (partially or totally). If there were no FRAND commitments you could hold up any implementer of a standard in which you had a patent for virtually the whole value of the standard (and obviously if everyone did that nothing would get implemented). Injuctions for FRAND Courts can offer damages and injuctions. As you have agreed to license SEP (standards essential patents) under FRAND terms it should be clear that damages should be a sufficient remedy and injunctions unnecessary, the courts can sort it out later (unless the company is unlikely to be able to pay up or can't be brought to court in the jurisdiction when there may be case to impose and injunction).

Tyrannosaurs 13y ago

That would be BlackBerry whose current value is largely in the patents they hold...

josephlord 13y ago
Yeah, but I haven't seen that many accusations of Blackberry "abusing" them. If that does rule them out it makes it really hard to see what a good choice would be if you are boycotting Apple over their patent (ab)use. I guess Firefox OS or something like that if you could find the right manufacturer but your choice is getting really quite slim.

kondor6c 13y ago

As far as phones go, perhaps FirefoxOS when it matures more. Too bad the OpenMoko project never picked up enough speed. If that really doesn't work, then there are several attempts to use a pure ASOP on other phones like the HTC One or something like that.

Prefinem 13y ago

You may think that Google and Samsung are worse because of FRAND, but the fact is that Apple by its very nature is more dangerous because of their closed system. If Google wins a patent, with it's open source AOSP, then guess what, anyone can use it. If Apple wins a patent, guess what, everyone has to pay for it. This is horrible for users and businesses and is evil in nature. As for Samsung, they are fighting back against Apple for the most part, and do so however they can.

gibwell 13y ago
Sadly not true. Google is moving most new Android development into tightly controlled closed source: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/10/googles-iron-grip-on-android-controlling-open-source-by-any-means-necessary/ http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/10/googles-iron-grip-on-... And portraying Samsung as the victim is absurd, they are one of the worlds most aggressive companies.
- Prefinem 13y ago
  I know Google is, because they have open sourced it for so long, competitors have taken and used it... Now they are trying to reap some rewards. But it won't matter since it has been open sourced the way it has... How many different ROMS are there now based off of AOSP? Hundreds Samsung is not a victim, they are battling just as hard as Apple, but Apple, because of how vehemently they have attached Google and Samsung, they are the bad guys. People defend them because they are blinded by some infatuation that makes no sense to me and most other, level headed people. And before you say I am an Apple hater, I have purchased multiple Apple products (mostly to evaluate compared to other products). I have owned every type of iPhone except for the new 5 series. I have had a mac, I have had iPods, etc etc... I was never satisfied with their price point for what I got. But, as a company, they disgust me. Anyone who wants to defend them can go for it.
  - gibwell 13y ago
    Cloning other people's products and then dumping them onto the market using predatory pricing is a far more 'vehement' attack than anything Apple has done. If you seriously believe Samsung is a more ethical company than Apple, then we need discuss this no longer.
    - Prefinem 13y ago
      Ethical and evil are two different words with two different meanings. And, if I can make the same thing you can for cheaper, then why shouldn't I? Your problem is that you value "ingenuity" as something that can be stolen or ripped off which is wrong. You can't protect ideas. Everyone has them. Why should yours be more valuable then mine. Just because you say yours first? Even when I may have been working on my without anyone knowing? Or maybe you think, taking the risk of making something (i.e. the iphone) and since you took that risk, you should be rewarded by not allowing anyone else to make one. Because life if fair right? If you created the first product, make the product better than others, and offer at a reasonable price, then there is no reason you shouldn't be successful. If apple didn't have patents, they would fail, why, because their products would be too expensive to compete with other "clones". Now, if they actually made a better product, then they would at least exist (if their "better" product was worth the cost). Think about the guys that started a business building normal pc's and putting OS X on them. Apple forcibly shut them down fast because they new people would flock to them. Why, because they were much cheaper and would do the same thing as a Mac. And yet, Apple forced the business to shut down so that they would own their market. That is evil. Your stance make me believe that either, a) you are an Apple lover and thus overriding basic logic because you are blinded, b) don't understand the underlying points c) just trying to argue. Your ultimatum of "If you don't believe Samsung is as evil as Apple then I won't talk to you" is childish, immature and extremely bias. I believe Samsung is a better company than Apple. That is my own personal opinion, and I don't care whether you believe it or not. Patents do not protect anyone accept the greedy corporation that files them. They stifle innovation and hurt everyone but themselves. Apple is the king of patents and thus, the worst.

acjohnson55 13y ago

I think it would be fair to say that Microsoft's bad behavior earned it an absolutely crap reputation amongst many in the tech community, and that negativity may have played a role in the rise of adoption of Apple products and Google services. I will have to look into this FRAND issue. Do you have any good links?

josephlord 13y ago
I know many here dislike him but Florian' blog is largely fact based and has an understanding of how patents actually work unlike much of the media: Latest relevant one and a couple of others on topic but I haven't had time to review it all for the best ones: http://www.fosspatents.com/2013/10/eu-commission-market-tests-totally.html http://www.fosspatents.com/2013/10/eu-commission-market-test... http://www.fosspatents.com/2012/12/samsung-drops-all-requests-for.html http://www.fosspatents.com/2012/12/samsung-drops-all-request... http://www.fosspatents.com/2013/07/motorolas-royalty-demand-from-microsoft.html http://www.fosspatents.com/2013/07/motorolas-royalty-demand-... I don't always agree with Florian's opinions (although I'm not usually that far off) but his facts are usually solid. Groklaw also had coverage but was often really quite disappointing when it moved beyond the SCO case. There seemed very much a Google good Apple bad, patents bad, FRAND patents not quite as bad when they are being used on people we don't like attitude. There are probably some good comments on some HN discussions although many people seem to be under a mistaken impression that standards essential patents are better and more inventive than others when commonly the reverse is true. My summary: Standards are a bit like laws and sausages - you don't want to see how they are made. Standards bodies are groups of competitors meeting in a room to set terms of business going forwards which without a signficant number of rules (including the declaration and FRAND licensing commitment of related patents) would be illegal under anti-trust/competition law. Often with a standard like a codec there are many ways to implement each part of the process e.g. transforming, filtering, compressing, encoding.... Many of these approaches will have similar performance or perform well in different scenarios, many will also be patented. Companies want their patents included as (whether they are good or bad patents) anyone can work around them if they aren't included in the standard so they would get no royalties for them. If included they will get a very small slice of a big pie. Horse trading goes on in addition to the inclusion of technologies on pure merit (we will vote for your filtering approach and you can vote for our encoding approach). Everyone both wants a good standard that people will use and to get as many patents in as possible. If a company has a patent that they don't want to license under the terms of the standards organisation (often very vague) they could declare that and the standard would be developed avoiding the technology (or potentially abandoned). Patents In principle a patent gives you the exclusive right to implement and/or license the technology and no-one should import/produce or distribute infringing technology without your permission. In practice many granted are invalid (partially or totally). If there were no FRAND commitments you could hold up any implementer of a standard in which you had a patent for virtually the whole value of the standard (and obviously if everyone did that nothing would get implemented). Injuctions for FRAND Courts can offer damages and injuctions. As you have agreed to license SEP (standards essential patents) under FRAND terms it should be clear that damages should be a sufficient remedy and injunctions unnecessary, the courts can sort it out later (unless the company is unlikely to be able to pay up or can't be brought to court in the jurisdiction when there may be case to impose and injunction).