“Five days ahead of a FRAND contract trial in the Western District of Wisconsin, Apple has formally declared to the court its willingness to pay Motorola Mobility for a license to its standard-essential wireless patents (‘wireless’ meaning cellular and WiFi standards in this context), but it will only write an immediate check to the wholly-owned Google subsidiary if the per-unit royalty does not exceed $1,” Florian Mueller reports for FOSS Patents. “If the court sets a FRAND rate at or below $1, Apple will take a license and start to pay right away. Otherwise Apple will appeal the decision and exhaust all of its legal options before Google gets anything.”
“Apple’s lawyers made this declaration, which may be the biggest smartphone patent news on Halloween 2012, on their client’s behalf in a response to a Motorola motion for clarification. That motion was filed yesterday and pointed out that Microsoft, whose FRAND contract case against Motorola will go to trial on November 13, had explicitly committed to the conclusion of a license agreement on court-ordered terms,” Mueller reports. “Apple’s position in the somewhat similar case in Wisconsin is basically that Microsoft’s actions don’t create legal obligations for others. But Apple seeks to demonstrate to the court that it is serious about resolving the wireless SEP dispute with Motorola Mobility through a license agreement on FRAND terms.”
Mueller explains, “Apple’s position is that it wants a solution but the price must be fair.”
Read more in the full article here.
Can Apple pay license fee to Google-the-IPs-Theft all in pennies? 🙂
They can pay in pennies but only if they are unrolled. 🙂
I think the copper contentbpf a penny is worth more than a penny
I think the copper content of a penny is worth more than a penny
Then turn around and sue the mole personally for theft from the boardroom.
I’m confused…
I thought that FRAND patents were paid for when chipsets were purchased for the phones. Is this not true?
This seems to be at the heart of the matter.
It would be stupid if that were not the case. Then the patent holders would be free to double dip without any care to the FRAND
Lets charge the chip makers 10 cents per chip. NOW, let charge Google 5-10 cents per chip, and lets hit Apple with $10 per chip, cause they can afford it right? RIGHT!?
That is essentially what Moto and others are trying to do.
Err…yes, confused that is. There can be thousands of SEPs relevant to a standard, many hundreds of contributing individuals, companies, patent pools and large corporations covering every aspect of a phones ability to meet the standard.
They don’t all come on one chip.
Meaning if there is 200 Million iPhone 5 sold this year;
Motorolas patents are worth only 200 Million?
Thick as a thieves. Eric the mole & co. paid $13 billion for the equivalent of a buck a handset all the while forgetting there isn’t actually 13 billion potential phone owners on this planet.
Apple’s position is that it wants a solution but the price must be fair????
hahahaha,
1 dollar per phone sold?
lets get it down to 25¢ Apple then its fair.
the lowest price is the law