Android Encountered by Apple Microsoft Enclosure: Patented Gold Vibrating Industry Circle

In HTC's view, the reason Apple has treated itself through patent litigation is the surprising increase in sales of Android smartphones by HTC. Yesterday, HTC officials sent a media statement to a Southern Metropolitan reporter and said, “We have full confidence in appeals and have fully prepared and will take all possible ways to safeguard our rights and interests.” Originated from the administrative judge of the United States International Trade Commission (ITC) A preliminary decision was made on July 15th, local time, and HTC infringed 2 of the 10 patent rights that Apple controlled in March of this year. As stated in the statement, HTC has explicitly appealed.

The attack of the patented spear came on the surface and it was the shield named HTC. In fact, the main body behind the intruder was Google Open Mobile Operating System Android. The recent spearheads with aggressive offensive operations include the Microsoft IT giant Microsoft. Also for Android smartphones, Microsoft has charged HTC $4-5 per Android device through patents. Motorola and Samsung, two other major Android smartphone makers, are still in the “fears”. Apple, Microsoft just to defend their own rights, or do they have other plans? In the process of Android's patent siege, the truth is emerging.

lucky? Based on input-output ratio

According to the data released by the IFICLAIMS Patent Service Company, among the 50 companies in the United States in 2010, Microsoft had 3,094 new patents and Apple had 563, and Google was outside the list, with 50 out of 50. In addition, some of Google’s existing 701 patents are also shared with other homes, and they lack diversity. Most of them are related to search or location services.

The problems caused by the lack of patents are quietly erupting in the industry circle centered on Google. Since last year, although Google's name has rarely been reported in newspapers, regardless of Apple's lawsuit against HTC, Samsung, or Microsoft sued Motorola, etc., the patent issues involved are due to Google's open operating system Android.

"No manufacturer will completely ignore possible patent infringement issues before producing Android phones. However, due to Android's free, they have already saved a large amount of money in the production of smart phones." Hua Jie consulting consumer electronics industry analyst Li Yuankai It is believed that many manufacturers are fortunate when considering Android phone patents. Especially small manufacturers will think that large IT companies will not stare at themselves. Even if the lawsuit wins, there will be no benefit in terms of sales volume.

"We are also doing Android phones, and there will be patent issues, but compared with Microsoft WP7, Android itself has saved about 15-25 US dollars per system patent licensing fees." Shenzhen, a company listed on the background of mobile phone manufacturers responsible for The reporter pointed out that the patent litigation is often protracted, and the party that initiates the lawsuit must also consider the “input-output ratio”.

Offensive and defensive, winning or losing are commonplace

As for large manufacturers, their own patent reserves are often the main means of defending intellectual property litigation. "In the battlefield of the patent, everyone has what he has to do, and winning or losing is a matter for the military." Li Yuankai said.

Typical examples come from Apple. In the patent litigation with HTC, Apple won an initial victory. However, in the recent patent lawsuit with Nokia, Apple eventually chose to settle with the other party, paid a one-time fee of approximately 200 million euros, and will continue to pay approximately 40 million euros in royalties to Nokia each subsequent quarter.

It is this pattern of mutual offensive and defensive holdings of patents that constitutes a phase of chaos. It is noteworthy that all the recent patent litigations involving smart phones have been filed by the plaintiff and the defendant has lodged a counterclaim. For example, "Apple sued HTC infringement" case, the latest official statement said, "According to ITC No. 337-TA-724 investigation results, ITC also initially determined that Apple infringed HTC subsidiary S3 Graphics patents." It is reported that HTC announced the acquisition of S3G raphics on July 6, 2011.

Meng Pu, senior vice president of Motorola's mobile technology company and president of Greater China, said in an interview with the media that Motorola has more than 17,000 patents worldwide, and now there are more than 7,000 patents applied throughout the world. He emphasized that "Although there are many lawsuits related to Android, we still continue to focus on the Android platform from Motorola."

Patents can not stop people

Looking at the patent case based on smart phones for a year, the exposure of the word “defend” is quite high. The purpose of the plaintiff was to defend the rights and interests, and the defendant appealed the counterclaim in order to defend the rights and interests. Does it mean that you need to be so motivated by a single job for rights and face alone?

As the most eye-catching two plaintiffs recently, Microsoft and Apple did not directly put the patented profit-making business model on the table like Qualcomm did. Apple even stated that "patent infringement lawsuits have consumed a huge amount of time and costs." But according to third-party statistics, Apple has become the world's most technologically prosecuted company in recent years. In addition, an unconfirmed list of work by Apple shows that Apple is actively expanding Apple’s litigation team to prepare for future intellectual property litigation.

Looking at the profits of patents, this is really something that people can't stop. According to statistics, in 2010, a total of 140 million Android mobile phones were sold globally. With these mobile phones, Microsoft received a total of US$6.6-11 billion in ActiveSync (mobile phone PC synchronization software) royalties and a US$700 million Android patent licensing fee. A total of 14-18 billion U.S. dollars. In contrast, Microsoft’s own operating system, Windows Phone 7 (hereinafter referred to as WP7), and previous versions of Windows mobile phones sold only 12 million units last year, which was calculated at an average system authorization fee of US$15 per unit, and revenue was far lower than patents. Lee.

Another way of calculating comes from Android system developer Google's data. According to Google’s statistics, currently, the world produces 500,000 Android devices per day, which is 182.5 million units a year. If all manufacturers of Android phones pay HTC’s patent fees of US$4-5 per unit, the total cost will be the highest. Will exceed 900 million U.S. dollars.

The side report "The purpose is to improve judicial efficiency."

Samsung responds to Apple's withdrawal from North America

At the end of last month, as Samsung revoked the previous patent infringement case filed against Apple in the North District of California, most of the industry’s views were that the move was intended to show favor to Apple because the latter’s large number of component business was OEMed by Samsung. Based on mutual intellectual property rights complaints, Apple announced that it would replace the foundry party. However, yesterday Samsung Electronics sent a statement to the Southern Capital Reporter, denying such speculation, claiming that the withdrawal of the lawsuit was intended to increase judicial efficiency.

On June 30, Samsung Electronics initiated a counterclaim against Apple’s patent infringement suit filed in the District Court of the Northern District of California on June 15. Samsung stated that in order to allow the counterclaim to be considered simultaneously, Samsung also withdrew its previous patent infringement case filed against the court on April 27th.

"Since the two cases are relevant and Samsung claims that its patent infringement claims were a counterclaim in Apple's lawsuit, Samsung's withdrawal of the independent lawsuit seeks judicial efficiency through reasonable legal procedures." The statement stressed that it is worth noting that it is worth noting that Withdrawing the lawsuit does not affect Samsung’s other patent infringement lawsuits filed against Apple in the United States and elsewhere.

In addition, for Apple's initial ban on Samsung Infuse 4G, Galaxy S4G, DroidCharge, and GalaxyTab10 in the United States. Samsung believes that "the ban has no legal basis." Implications, Samsung withdrawal is not "soft", and Apple's patent battle will continue. What is even more striking in the industry is that the patent dispute between Samsung and Apple has risen to a new level.

According to foreign reports, Samsung this week to the United States, California Northwest District Court reunification, asked Apple hired law firm Bridges & Mavrakakis some lawyers should not be appointed as the case of lawyers, because these lawyers have a conflict of interest under California law Because they previously served as Samsung's appointed lawyer in other legal disputes.

According to public information, Samsung’s five lawyers from the law firm defended Samsung’s patent suit against Ericsson and Sony Ericsson in 2006. Samsung believes that these lawyers have conducted in-depth research on Samsung's patents, and also assisted patent experts, and even Samsung's own part of the team, to jointly research and formulate intellectual defense methods. For Apple, such a lawyer group is undoubtedly "knowing oneself and knowing oneself and knowing oneself" and adding more odds.

What's wrong with linking Apple and Microsoft?

Patent mentioned in the lawsuit of Apple vsHTC Android phone and preliminary success:

Patent No. 6,343,263, a real-time signal processing system for serial transmission data. It mainly deals with data (including voice, fax, video, etc.) sent from one device to another through the network. In addition to sending and receiving data, the patent does not mention wireless networks, mobile phones or any content that has a direct connection with a smartphone.

Patent No. 5,946,647, A system and method for executing an instruction in a computer-generated data structure.

Microsoft vs Motorola patents mentioned in the Android mobile phone lawsuit:

Patent No. 5,579,517, long file name support. MS-DOS prior to version 5 only supported 11 character file names (including extensions), so Microsoft invented a method that supports both long file names and short file names. Friends who have used the DOS operating system should know that DOS, which is a file name longer than 11 characters, will automatically be shortened and replaced by a part of the ~ symbol. This patent is about this implementation.

Patent No. 6,621,746, flash erase. Monitor the use of flash memory and perform targeted erase operations as appropriate. This involves the management of the flash file system, the specific description is more complex, so there is no way to determine whether or not there is an association with Android.

Patent No. 6,578,054, incremental synchronization. A system and method for synchronizing multiple copies of data in a server and a client. Through this method, the incremental changes of a data copy will be identified, transmitted, and consolidated onto all other data copies. According to this description, Android's data synchronization function completely bypasses the patent.