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The information on Groklaw is not intended to constitute legal advice. While Mark is a lawyer and he has asked other lawyers and law students to contribute articles, all of these articles are offered to help educate, not to provide specific legal advice. They are not your lawyers.

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Almost agreeing with Microsoft | 98 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Find myself agreeing with Microsoft
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, November 08 2012 @ 04:27 PM EST
It is entirely expected that the resulting licenses will discriminate based on
the *situation* of the licensee, they're just prohibited from discriminating
based on *competition with* the licensee.

It's similar to the way that a company can have "non-discriminatory"
hiring practices, but insist on gathering a great deal of information about an
applicant before making a hiring decision, it is only specific traits that you
are required to ignore.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Find myself agreeing with Microsoft
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, November 08 2012 @ 04:30 PM EST
Generally the information disclosed to the other party is intended to improve
your position, you could probably avoid revealing all that information, but
you'd then need a license for all conceivable purposes, which would be a bit
pricey.

The problem is that the very concept of royalties is broken from the get-go, all
the brokenness in the system flows from that initial source.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Motorola is nondiscriminatory
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, November 08 2012 @ 06:18 PM EST
1) No matter WHO you are, you know that the royalty rate is no more than
2.25% of the final non-discounted price of your product.

2) No matter WHO you are, Motorola will negotiate a license with you in good
faith.

You see, Motorola is non-discriminatory. They've negotiated in good faith
with their competitors to include Apple and Microsoft. Microsoft did not want
to negotiate so they have asked the court to do so on their behalf. Apple
doesn't agree with Motorola on what a reasonable rate should be and wanted
the court to endorse Apple's ideas and rates, hence it got thrown out. That is
different from asking the court to negotiate on their behalf.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

    Almost agreeing with Microsoft
    Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, November 08 2012 @ 08:01 PM EST
    Which is a first...

    And only in a narrow sense. Namely, given the sheer number of patents involved
    in phones today, I do agree that a pool approach is probably in the end a
    workable idea.

    That said, I disagree completely with what they are trying to do.

    First, the only reason this thicket exists is because the USPTO is granting
    patents on anything that blows through the door. Can the software patents and
    the thicket gets a lot thinner quickly.

    Second, pool pricing is not the current model, and Motorola should not have the
    rug pulled out from under them on something they have been doing for years. If
    M$ wants to change to that model going forward, then they should work with the
    standards bodies to effect that change prospectively, not abuse the court system
    to force it retroactively on a competitor they simply don't like.

    Third, the current system simply doesn't work the way M$ would like it to.
    Tough. If they want to jump into the market, then they should play by the rules
    the market is currently using. Colluding with another cash-rich
    johnny-come-lately to the market to re-create the market in their own fantasy,
    is not an anti-trust violation only because its not the market they currently
    hold a monopoly in. But since they are certainly using the profits from their
    existing monopoly to strongarm competitors in a new market, its pretty darn
    close.

    [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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