“Now that the Obama administration has intervened in a patent dispute between Apple and Samsung, uncertainty lingers over how effective the courts have been in such cases. Are politicians starting to lose patience?” Zack Whittaker reports for CNET. “For the first time in more than 20 years, the White House squashed a verdict handed down by a top U.S. trade court, a result of an ongoing patent dispute between Samsung and Apple.”
“The move came as a surprise to industry watchers, despite coming only a couple of months after the government set up a task force to ‘protect innovators from frivilous litigation,'” Whittaker reports. “The Obama administration has long had professional and political links with Apple, the iPhone and iPad maker at the center of the dispute with Samsung over patents crucial to industry standards.”
Whittaker reports, “But the move itself was not a show of support to the Cupertino, Calif.-based technology giant. It was to send a signal that ‘enough was enough, already.'”
Read more in the full article here.
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lol, the spin begins.
The government is ’s bestest pal.
The ITC just might have well just screamed to the world “We’re a bunch of doddering, slobbering old anti-business incompetent fools, idiots and morons with Alzheimers!”
Enough is Enough !
Only a nation of philistines would not see how a company like Apple is a national asset.
Make IP count and quit the crap.
“The move came as a surprise to industry watchers”.
Actually it didn’t.
“The Obama administration has long had professional and political links with Apple, the…..”.
No more so (but maybe less) than any other major US tech company.
“But the move itself was not a show of support to the Cupertino, Calif.-based technology giant. It was to send a signal that ‘enough was enough, already.”
Enough? Of what? The decision by the ITC was just plain and simple IDIOTIC. It was to correct that.
Zee DoubleYou is a moron.
Standards are truly essential. Anyone who has had to deal with the horrible mess of emergency teams knows this (radios for policemen cannot talk to firemen cannot talk to ambulances cannot talk to hospitals cannot talk to utility response teams etc. etc.), True, useful standards make it possible to avoid such nightmares.
The additional upside of standards is that the market for your product is several times larger than with proprietary products.
The downside? The often sneaky way companies use their patents with regard to standards. Some have gone so far as to hide the fact that they have patents on a certain technology while having people in the standards committee actively promoting their patented technology. Then when the standard gets formally issued, spring the fact that the patents exist upon every potential user of that standard.
Others, like in this case, are truly discriminatory with regard to the patent licensing. Samsung, by some reports, was demanding 12 times as much in royalties from Apple as from any other licensee. No reasonable person would consider that “reasonable and non discriminatory”.
Additionally, according to ITC documents, Samsung was demanding that Apple cross license its patents with Samsung. The patents Samsung was demanding are NOT Standards Essential Patents (SEPs) and do not come under FRAND rules.
The idiotic ITC ruling that Apple had to stop importing certain Apple products was basically, “Samsung has a valid patent. Apple is infringing on that patent. We’re banning the import of every infringing product.” (Contrary to some reports, the ITC just bans imports, not the sale of the item. Items sitting on the shelf in the U.S. can typically still be sold.)
In its ruling, the ITC did not differentiate between Standards Essential Patents and other kinds of patents. SEPs *MUST* be offered for license under FRAND rules. Non SEPs do not.
This latest order just recognizes this fact. For all practical purposes, this latest order says to Samsung, “Yes you have SEPs. Now act like it and demand that Apple give you royalties under FRAND rules.”
This latest order has absolutely NOTHING to do with the speed of the courts. (I do agree that the tectonic speed (it’s not even as fast as a glacier!) of the courts makes court rulings irrelevant in the business world. You need look no further than the two large Apple versus Samsung cases under Judge Koh to see that.). By the time the “final” ruling comes down no one will even be *using* any of the devices in question let alone them being for sale.
However, this order has nothing to do with this. This order has to do with the ITC screwing up royally and the administration correcting that.
The ITC should have said to Samsung and Apple, “Work this out under the FRAND rules or we” *TELL* you what the royalties will be. Now grow up and work this out OR ELSE.”
Politicians criticizing others for glacial responses. Now that’s funny.