[josephlord]

If Samsung is asking everyone for the same absolute (not percentage) rate and isn't demanding cross licenses then Apple should have to pay that rate (assuming the patents are valid). I'm not sure that contradicts anything that I said.

I think Samsung can raise invalidity issues in the case before the judge/jury. If Apples patents are deemed invalid then they will get nothing.

The Apple patents that I'm aware of are fairly basic but can be worked around. E.g. by stopping scrolling dead at the end of the range and requiring something other than a swipe to unlock.

FRAND is a commitment made in standardisation to prevent the standards group from being an illegal cartel. That commitment should be kept. But a single company making a patented feature desirable would not trigger antitrust concerns in the general case so they wouldn't have needed to make an FRAND commitment. The potential exception would be for the Microsoft FAT patent because FAR is effectively a standard and while not created by a group of companies Microsoft was a monopolist. This is a rare case when I think FRAND may be appropriate rule for MS to adopt even if not legally require.

Yes the patent system is currently ridiculous and needs to grant far fewer but that is a complaint against the system which I would like to see reformed but you have to play by the rules in force. As I've said in a few posts I don't remember any tech giants (even Google and Samsung) campaigning against the patent system or even software patents. If the rules as they exist are enforced maybe that will change and the big players will want to change the system.

[justinschuh]

To be honest, I'm not sure what point you're even making here. You seem to be redefining the parameters to what's strictly legal in a system you agree is seriously flawed. But that's not where the thread of this conversation started. I never claimed what Apple was doing was illegal. Someone accused Samsung of behaving "unfairly," so I pointed to Apple's unfairness. As far as the law is concerned both parties are still behaving entirely legally (as no one's been found guilty of anything yet). Accepting that, I do consider the ethics of the issue a different story.

[josephlord]

I know this is an old thread but I think I do want to respond.

Legally the court will decide but that doesn't mean that we can't have views or that either company is necessarily behaving legally (if you steal something you aren't behaving legally until convicted). For my perspective I am assuming all patents valid (if they are invalidated the license fees are no problem as they will be zero).

Samsung is in my view breaching promises made to the world including me and threatening the whole standardisation process. At the very least everyone needs to understand just how weak FRAND commitments are and adjust their behaviour accordingly. If allowed to stand Samsung's view of FRAND could do massive global harm as it will mean even more desperate fights to keep patented technologies out of standards where the patents are owned by companies not trusted to 'do the right thing' which could lead towards standardisation deadlock. It could also lead to all sorts of other companies all trying to extract all the value of standards making them unaffordable in many use cases.

Compared to this I really can't see anything unfair at all in what Apple is doing. Saying if you want to use this unnecessary feature you have to pay us a lot of money sounds fair to me, you can freely choose not to use it (damages/back licenses before the patents are confirmed by a court should probably be lower). The damages claims are just claims I don't expect to be fully granted but that is just the system isn't it, claim the moon on a stick expecting to get half a stick at the end.