“Unlike Microsoft which has always used this practice from its founding, Apple has always attempted to license or own the IP it uses, not steal it.”
That’s laughable. “Efficient infringement” is nothing but a euphemism for patent theft and Apple has been one of the prime drivers of it.
Apple got a big boost in this when Obama appointed a corporate attorney for one of Apple’s fellow efficient infringers as the head of the patent office.
Fortunately Trump’s choice to head the USPTO is cleaning house and trying to restore America’s standing as a defender of patents, instead of being the enabler of massive theft by the world’s richest corporations.
With any luck SCOTUS will help this along by driving a stake through the kangaroo court created during Obama, the Patent Trial and Appeals Board, which has acted as the getaway driver for the efficient infringement thieves.
Once again it will require an Article III court to take away property, instead of an administrative body filled with corrupt hacks who routinely violate the protections offered by a real court.
You’ve provided zero proof for your claims, Pelham. Apple has always licensed the software and tech it uses. Don’t trot out that old canard from Steve Jobs about great artists steal ideas, because that was taken out of context. You literally have zero proof of this contention that Apple makes a conscious decision to steal IP because the litigation will be cheaper because it is not in an age where juries are awarding multiple hundred million dollar to multi-billion dollar awards for infringement. USE YOUR HEAD for something other than growing hair. It just is not cheaper than paying a few cents per component licensing that is passed on in the price of the product.
Most of the lawsuits are brought NPEs (non-practicing entities, i.e. a company that monetizing owning patents that are not actually being used for anything except suing actual companies using other patents to build their products) bring lawsuits on minor claims in inventions that never made it to market that were not viable (some are mere ideas that were never built or even proved to work), but were granted patents on techniques that are actually not used in the products they claim are infringing the patents.
The Qualcomm licensing scheme cited in your linked article was charging a license on the entire widget when they made only one or two minor component(s) — AND were demanding it even if another maker was providing that component(s) on some of the widgets merely because they had a monopolistic position in those components and the companies requiring those components because they were part of the standard had few or only one competitor from which to choose — was an aberration in the industry and it had to be stopped from breaching the FRAND requirements they agreed to abide by when their components were accepted into the standard.
Your claim that Apple has been a “prime driver of it” is patently false. The facts do not back your assertion at all and in fact falsify your claim.