“Yesterday I reported on Google’s (Motorola’s) proposal to have an arbitration panel set the terms for a standard-essential patent (SEP) license agreement with Apple,” Florian Mueller reports for FOSS Patents. “Meanwhile, Apple has filed with the court an exchange of letters between the companies concerning this subject.”
“An arbitration proceeding between Apple and Google (including Motorola) would have some important implications if it happened. I don’t mean to rule out that it will happen but I doubt it at this juncture,” Mueller reports. “Should it happen at some point, a number of pending litigations, including Motorola’s appeal of the FRAND part of Judge Posner’s ruling, would be withdrawn. There wouldn’t be any risk of SEP-based sales bans between these two companies. It would all just come down to the determination of a royalty rate and possibly other business terms.”
Mueller reports, “Ongoing antitrust investigations of Google’s (Motorola’s) use of SEPs in the European Union and the United States would also be narrowed in the event of arbitration, though Google could still be fined for misconduct — and Google’s SEP assertions against Microsoft would also have to be addressed one way or another. The Apple-Google correspondence… shows that the parties still disagree on several key parameters of an arbitration proceeding. The list may not appear to be long, but some of the issues are so fundamental that I doubt they’re going to agree in the very near term unless there’s a change of circumstances that affects either party’s stance.”
Much more in the full article here.
Related articles:
Google’s Motorola says it wants binding arbitration to resolve Apple’s FRAND patent claims – November 15, 2012
FTC staff said to formally recommend antitrust lawsuit against Google over FRAND abuse – November 1, 2012
Google U.S. antitrust lawsuit said to be urged by FTC investigators over Internet search, FRAND abuse – October 15, 2012
U.S. FTC investigating Google, Motorola Mobility over FRAND abuse – June 30, 2012
EU launches full-blown investigation of Samsung’s suspected abuse of FRAND-pledged patents; Motorola on notice – January 31, 2012
Apple asked standards body to set rules for essential FRAND patents – February 8, 2012
What is Google (Motorola) charging HTC or RIM or Nokia or Samsung for the use of the IP in those patents?
Apple should be paying the same amount per phone that the Android phone people pay. If there is a deescalation clause (e.g., $1 for the first million phones, $0.90 for the next four million, $0.80 for then next ten million) then that should be linearly extrapolated as necessary to meet Apple’s quantities.
It’s simple: these are SEPs. They are offered up as part of the STANDARD to make systems interoperable and to level the playing field as far as implementing the standard goes. It’s not supposed to be arbitrarily more expensive for Apple to implement the standard than for Samsung to implement the standard.
It would be very interesting if we found out that companies like Samsung using Android paid much less in royalties than RIM & Nokia for their non Android phones.