This may be payback for Apple!

[arthurking83]

From Toms Hardware (http://www.tomshardware.com/news/iPhone-5-Fake-GooPhone-Patent-Leaked-Images-Specs,17452.html)


If you've heard of Apple's lawsuit on Samsung of late, you may get a laugh from the story.

Basic rundown:
A Chinese company had rushed to market an iPhone5 lookalike from leaked pics.
They say that they'll sue Apple if they introduce the iPhone5 to the Chinese market :p


.. my instinct says that even tho South Korean and Chinese politics may be poles apart .. Samsung may have had a helping hand in this GooPhone i5 ;)

The iRony of it all is amusing, to say the least!!

[Kym]

Apple are now as evil as Microsnot -- ha ha ha !!!

[ricktas]

I wrote a small article the other day on the Phone Wars. I post it here to show the issue is bigger than Apple Vs Samsung. It is more about Apple not wanting to be part of the rest of the phone development community:

An Article on the phone wars. Apple Vs Samsung

If you have not been living under a rock you would have heard about the phone wars. Apple recently won a US$1Billion lawsuit against Samsung in the US. Different courts around the world have had different outcomes.

Now some background:
These court cases were taken up over patent infringements. For the record Samsung has over 31,500 patents registered (US, Japan and EU). Microsoft has over 8,500 and Apple has over 1,900. To put things in perspective Samsung do not just make phones, computers and media players. For example Samsung developed and own the patents on the Compact Flash (CF) memory card.

Now there is a thing called 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) which includes a term called FRAND (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory). The3GPP is a partnership of mobile phone/tech developers that was formed to maintain and develop industry wide standards for mobile communications devices (phones). Part of 3GPP is that FRAND comes into play, where companies can create and patent their technology, but they have to supply it to the other players in the mobile market under fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms. So they cannot charge one company a ridiculous amount to use their patent, compared to that charged to another company. 3GPP is about the entire industry (not just the signatories to the 3GPP) sharing their knowledge and patents.

Here is the clincher; every mobile phone manufacturing company in the world is a signatory to 3GPP, except one... Apple! Now this shows the issue is much bigger than the Apple Vs Samsung court cases. Rather than play ball and work with the industry, Apple is trying to sit outside the entire mobile communication industry and use court cases to get its own way.

Apple in 2010 tried to licence some of its patents to Samsung, but outside the 3GPP framework. Samsung declined.

Apple wanted a mutually beneficial deal with Samsung, we will licence some of our patents to you, if you licence some to us. Samsung had to decline cause it was outside their signatory to the 3GPP. Samsung wanted Apple to become a team player in the industry. If Samsung signed the deal with Apple, it would have been breaching its own 3GPP membership, as it could not share those Apple patents with the rest of the industry.

So Apple then went to other companies, namely Qualcomm and Infineon that follow standards set down by Samsung and others who support industry standards, and sourced the technologies it wanted, from them. So Apple got access to the technologies it wanted, from within the 3GPP members, as the 3GPP is about sharing information and patents for the benefit of the mobile communication industry. Thus Apple got access to Samsung patents, but not directly from Samsung.

Both sides should call time-out. Apple needs to become a signatory to the 3GPP, but it most likely won’t as it doesn’t want to share ALL of its own patent portfolio, only the bits it wants to. Whilst Samsung, Motorola, Nokia, Microsoft, HTC, and more all share under the 3GPP. But Apple still wants access to the 3GPP member patents as its devices are developed on many of those patents. Samsung makes about 25% of the parts in an iPhone.

Apple needs to tread carefully, it might win in the court room, but it might very well lose in the real world. If the members of the 3GPP get fed up, they could alter their rules and lock Apple (the only mobile device manufacturer who is not a signatory to the 3GPP), out of the industry and with that Apple would lose access to the patents it needs that others own.

[Kym]

Groklaw is very good on the A v S(G) issues http://www.groklaw.net/