[Macworld]

Post your comments for FTC reportedly investigates Google over Motorola patents here

[flowney]

Who determines what is "fair and reasonable?" That seems rather subjective and open to widely differing interpretations.

[bastion]

flowney, on 02 July 2012 - 05:42 AM, said:

Who determines what is "fair and reasonable?" That seems rather subjective and open to widely differing interpretations.

In general; the industry does. If the industry can't then it's whoever makes the better argument to the courts.

http://en.wikipedia....atory_licensing

[Diesel50]

flowney, on 02 July 2012 - 05:42 AM, said:

Who determines what is "fair and reasonable?" That seems rather subjective and open to widely differing interpretations.

In a standard like 3G there are literally thousands of companies contributing hundreds or even thousands of pantents to the standard. Those companies agree beforehand with the leaders of the industry involved what represents resonable terms for all of those patents. Once agreed upon the patents then get locked into the standard and become part of it. once that happens there is nothing any company can do but use the standard.

Those who have patents in that standard pre agree on price structuring for there particular patent and then get revenues from all the companies that use that standard. Those royalty rates are then submitted to government committees like the etsi for cell standards and that becomes the rate companies pay.

What Googlorola is doing is taking one of there patents that is involved in a standard that they agreed to license for a frand rate to the government regulators and saying that one company (or two in this case like apple and microsoft) must pay 4000% more than any other company to use there one standards essential frand patent out of hundreds that make up the standard. Its called patent holdup.

The only reason that patent is worth anything is because it was included in the standard. If it was not in a standard it would be literally worthless.

With microsoft Googlorola wants 2.5% of the end sales price of every copy of windows and the xbox. With apple Googlorola wants 2.5% of the end sales price of the iPhone, iPad, Macbook Air, and Macbook Pro. In microsofts case microsofts own estimates put this cost to them for the 1 h.264 patent Googlorola is suing them over at around conservatively 4 billion a year. That is just for 1 patent! With apple the cost is even worse for the 3G patent at around 8 billion a year! It amounts to nothing but extortion and to get microsoft and apple to capitulate to Googlorola demands of backing down and cross licensing.

This post has been edited by Diesel50: 02 July 2012 - 02:35 PM