Really, they did and in this post I try to answer why
The attached article explains that Apple has transferred some patents to this company which now uses them to sue Sony, Nokia Samsung, Amazon, Rim, HTC and others over patents which used to belong to Apple.
I rarely do link dumps and after noticing this yesterday I had troubles coming up with better explanations than +Jason Kincaid at TechCrunch does. In his excellent piece of investigative journalism he tries them all but but the only one that could stick is that Digitude had some patent over Apple which they used to blackmail as leverage over Apple. Interesting but without more evidence too weak to consider at the moment.
Apple has a deal with patent company Digitude which “is a new kind of patent investment vehicle because it seeks to team up with strategic players that can invest in Digitude not with money, but by contributing patents. The contributing entity would then get a license for all of Digitude’s patents” as their chairman has been quoted in Forbes.
To be able to sue companies for the American ITC you need to proof that you have a US based, so called domestic industry which uses the patent(s). So what is commonly called a patent troll would be incapable of suing others as it would not have a domestic economic interest in doing so. In this case there is a confidential appendix which Digitude filed showing that it has a user of it´s patents which has a domestic industry. This so called licensee is not mentioned anywhere in the ITC filing as they wanted to stay out of view. Hence the confidential filing of separate documents. TechCrunch omits the necessity to proof that there is an actual economic interest in the US but it´s of no importance for their article as they subsequently search the ITC website and find a document labelled ´Digitude-Apple License Agreement”. No doubt this is the confidential appendix.
So why would Apple hide behind an obscure patent troll?
I have a possible explanation which hasn´t been mentioned by +Jason Kincaid
Bear with me as I present it. Apple lost a case against a small Spanish company which they ´bullied´ into submission. Apple did so by getting criminal charges against 5 person Android ´manufacturer´ Nuevas Tecnologias which carried the NT-K tablet. The criminal (as opposed to all the civil procedures) was about copyright infringements as usual but the difference was that Apple got this company black listed in Europe from importing and management got sued for criminal offenses.
This case has been overturned and the seized goods of this dwarfish company have been released. I wrote about it before in my series of post about the patents battle. However in this case the damage had been done and this company was effectively put out of business. No wonder they are now going to court to get compensation for damages. So far so good.
The noticeable thing however is that this small company seems to be one of the so many who get bullied into submission by the use of Apple´s legal force. Authorities tend to act on claims by Apple and in this rare case the five person company fought back and won after a year. 99% however give up or just run out of money.
Not only did this verdict and the story surrounding it Apple´s image no good in Spain, but little Nuevas Tecnologias now wants anti-trust authorities in Spain and in the EU to look into Apple´s behaviour. Chances are that Apple could get convicted of anti-competitive behaviour if they knew from the outset their claim was not as strong as they presented it to the authorities.
As this is not the only occasion where Apple has been found guilty of claiming infringements on their patents and demanding a stop on import or sale it could be considered a form of ´bullying´ competitors into submission by using the legal system. In Australia an initial preliminary against Samsung was overturned and in the US it was outright denied.
However companies with war chests smaller than the 200 million dollar Samsung set aside for a full scale patent war will not be able to enter markets or avoid head to head competition with a company that claims that a rectangular with a glass surface is a Cupertino invention. The moment companies start to follow Apple´s demands, start designing products which are less functional to escape the full wrath of Apple´s very competent legal team, or avoid entering markets at all open competition is endangered. This would (or at least should) attract attention of antitrust legislators all over the world.
Getting back to the reason why Apple may be hiding behind Digitude in court cases before the ITC (the US import authority) and possibly in other cases leads to a twofold answer .
Two reasons why Apple would like to hide it´s bullying behind a fronting patent troll:
all the news about lawsuits starts harming the Apple brand especially if Apple acts against against the interests of consumers of other brands like BlackBerry, Samsung, Amazon, HTC or the dwarfish Spanish company. Consumer just don´t like to see this anymore and the signs of a ´thermonuclear war´ on competitors like Android don´t go well with ordinary Apple buyers.
if cases like the Spanish one, reach anti-trust regulators in Europe or the US, Apple would be prone to get very serious fines where a small patent troll vehicle will not be accused of abuse of market power. Apple can´t be easily accused of misuse of it´s market power and patent portfolio if they are not the owner and pursuer of the patents in question*
If you can come up with a better explanation for Apple´s hiding behind a patent troll and handing over of it´s own patents which they never do I would love to hear it.
all my patent posts #patents #patentsMax https://plus.google.com/u/2/s/Google%2B%20stream%3A%20patents%20inurl%3A112352920206354603958
Over the last two years, Apple has been engaged in vicious legal battles over smartphone patents, many of which are aimed at squelching (or squeezing money out of) manufacturers of devices running And…
That's a great bit of dot connecting, and provides more evidence for me to continue with the more open source nature of Android driven technologies. I was thinking of going Mac for my next main computer purchase, this is part of a growing body of evidence as to why I will go in a different direction.
+Gregory Esau that would be a yes to my suggestion that Apple does so not to alienate its customers I guess 🙂
Indeed, +Max Huijgen ! The sneakiness makes it all the worse, for my opinion of Apple. Of course, for the Apple fan boys, this will make no matter, that Apple is looking more like the old Microsoft.
Saturday is not a day for this kind of posts so I don´t expect fan boys to show up, but I would like to know from people like yourself. People who don´t belong to the cult but who just like Apple products or the brand it represents.
Short of writing an essay of my whole thoughts around this, +Max Huijgen , my own philosophy here is to support business practices that get the principle of putting in more to the system than they take out–that is the only way for a sustainable economic future where the majority of people and businesses can thrive. Which also means I support a very diverse set of competing products and services from which to chose, where innovation, collaboration, and the ability to lead natural systems win out over predatory and/or parasitic practices of choking of competition rather than just being better than your competition.
Apple on the face of it, does make a product that is better. They create customers and loyalty with great products.
Then they turn around and do stuff like this. The patent troll process that you eloquently laid out, is one that ultimately kills the future, shrinks the pie. It's the same old world practice that brought us the Wall St plutocrats. It's a practice that needs to be sniffed out, and greatly discouraged.
Thanks again for your attention to the patent troll practice.
By the way in checking on the techcrunch article I noticed that the first patent number is for "Remote Procedure Call Component Management Method for a Heterogeneous Computer Network" which Digitude asserts against Amazon only.
The RPC is the cornerstone of networking so if they would win that one they would be rich even without Apples support. Remarkable.
Digitude by the way targets Amazon´s Fire tablet with this patent.
Patent 6456841 – "Mobile communication apparatus notifying user of reproduction waiting information effectively" describes that you get a notification when you missed a call or an SMS! According to Techcrunch this belonged to Apple and due to the obvious nature of this patent this could well be true.
I'm pretty sure the "Intellectual Property war by proxy" is patented by microsoft, e.g SCO.
Well then, all we need is a ballsy prosecutor and there might be a rico case, no? A criminal enterprise with apple essentially asking the other company top bust competitors shop for them with tools provided by Apple.
+Edouard Ravel That was ´BayStar´ if I remember well who acted as the shady company for Microsoft. Yes, they started this in the computer industry although I guess it was done many times in the history of patent wars.
+Max Smolev You write the script, I will look for a producer for the movie. Will it involve an armed Cadillac in good Al Capone tradition?
Great post!
The facts in this article made my eyes roll. I hope you are wrong, but i fear you may be right…
+Max Huijgen No way, we'll get sued by Apple and MS for violating their patent on outsourcing patent wars. Can we instead do a movie about plastic surgeon patenting certain shape of a nose and then suing other surgeons for trying to fix patient noses?
+Anton Spaans I actually hope I´m right as I would love to see the antitrust authorities to come down on the bullying.
If this is no market disruption based on market power I no longer know what would.
Interesting angle +Max Huijgen. Whatever the truth may be, it's high time courts in the EU & US put an end to these patent trolls. A contributor here last night made an excellent point about supporting companies who put more into the system than they take out. From what I see, Apple just wants to take.
+Gregory Esau, apologies. I see you made the exact same point re supporting companies who put more in than they take out. Didn't read through all the comments before I posted.
Just rewrote a part to better explain the antitrust line of my argument. Hope it´s more clear now.
+Ray Adamson I remember that comment. I think it was on my post from yesterday: Court: Apple to stop all iPhone and 3G iPad sales on German market on Motorola´s request https://plus.google.com/u/2/112352920206354603958/posts/eoQ1maFNKoX
It´s a valid point and it gets to the heart of the matter. For a long time Apple was considered a large contributor to the system while their business practices were largely ignored by customers. That seems to be changing now.
I use macs, I don't really claim to be a fan boy as I prefer Android for mobile use. I must say however that my iMac is a brilliant bit of kit and there is no way on earth I would consider going back to something with a Microsoft logo on it. I've been using my iMac for 3-4yrs and I have never had it crash or lockup once. I use it mainly for Java development and photo work and it's been faultless.
Now saying all this I am not a fan of the Apple culture, they seem to be a very very closed shop. This will alienate people, and more to the point it will alienate developers which is a group of individuals you really don't want to get on the wrong side of if your main business is IT related.
Apple are playing a very risky game at the moment and I don't see any sign of them backing off.
+Uriel Étranger just made the observation that if Microsoft had used a pre-approved of applications ten years ago all hell would have broken loose and now we want to have an app-store with a guarded front door!
Reminds me of the Microsoft/SCO vs. linux legal fiasco that began in 2003 and never proved any Linux violations…just FUD.
+mike polniak this goes a lot farther as there is hardly any doubts about the violation of the patents themselves.