Apple and Samsung Negotiating Agreement to Settle Patent Disputes Out of Court

A sad day for lawyers everywhere.... :)

For someone that is always talking about experience about the matter and knowledge, surely you are completely clueless about this particular matter, am I right?

I get my facts from the sources (actual court documents, evidence, etc), not from fansite articles.

Abusing SEPs that belong to the 80s is a bad business model.

That does not change the fact that Apple has stalled paying royalties for years, and that judges have negatively commented that Apple has been using the court system to try to lower the rates they'll have to pay.

Patent abuse is patent abuse, whether it's essential or not.

It's just as bad when a SEP holder tries for a intra-negotiation injunction, as when a non-SEP holder runs around suing everyone with similar solutions.

As Judge Posner put it, "You can't just assume that just because someone has a patent, he has deep moral right to exclude everyone else from using it."

I would add that I think this goes double for software patents.

Yes. Motorola was abusing SEPs (check), so they got nothing (check), as they should (check).

Not being able to get an injunction against Apple, does not mean Motorola won't get paid by Apple. Apple still owes royalties no matter what, and they've been piling up every day for years. Only now, Apple owes those back royalties to Google, since they own the patents.

That has been covered many times before. Apple knows it has to pay royalties on FRAND patents. But because competitors know its Apple, and they have lots of money, expect them to pay more for their licenses then anyone else. Thats not what FRAND is based upon.

This has indeed been covered many times before:

Apple refused to cross license. That's their decision, but Apple wanted to be treated special and pay the same lower rates that others got by cross-licensing.

That's hardly fair to the other companies.

Samsung is going to do what they want anyway, regardless of any agreements that may or may not be in place. It's just how they do business.

Hopefully this will happen, both companies probably spent more money in lawyer fees/court costs then what either ever gained.

It is past time that this happened. Get er' done!

This is almost TOO good to be true.