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CalTech wins $1.1B jury verdict in patent case against Apple, Broadcom
- pasttense01 7y agoThe issues here are simply too complicated for juries to decide--particularly the amounts of money. If Apple was simply using devices it purchased from Broadcom, Broadcom should be responsible for all the damages.
- twblalock 7y ago> The issues here are simply too complicated for juries to decide--particularly the amounts of money. That's why the appeals courts exist.
- senderista 7y agoPretty much any case requiring non-trivial evaluation of evidence is unsuited for a jury trial. Outsourcing the adjudication of justice to a dozen random people is stupidity on a par with deciding complex policy issues by popular referendum. There's a reason the non-Anglo-American developed world doesn't do it this way.
- colejohnson66 7y agoWorth mentioning that one (or both) side(s) will try to make the hurt be full of people who are stupid and easily swayed. That makes it even worse because whoever can throw the most buzzwords or be most confident will usually win in those cases. For examples, see the many jury cases regarding pop song writers “stealing” music
- Paul-ish 7y agoI wonder what a "jury of peers" would look like in these cases.
- egdod 7y agoThat actually refers to criminal cases, not civil.
- vkou 7y agoWhich is why both sides bring in, and cross-examine experts to help the jury decide.
- colejohnson66 7y agoIMO you shouldn’t need experts; The jury should (in the first place) consist of people who understand the issue. Not people who are swayed by buzzwords.
- vkou 7y agoIf an industry is small enough, the only people who can understand an issue without expert testimony are people who are probably going to be highly biased, by virtue of working with one of the participants. And regardless of the size of an industry, people who have a high understanding of an issue are likely to have preconceived biases about a dispute. Stuff a jury full of tech people, to resolve a tech issue, and odds are, an Anyone versus Oracle dispute is not going to have a fair trial, regardless of the merits of the case. Most tech people hate Oracle.
- stefan_ 7y agoThere are tons of ways to avoid a jury panel. You find any sort of prior art and patents, along with any suits, simply vanish; you file a challenge with the patent office for reexamination, an expert there decides it's invalid, the case disappears.
- colejohnson66 7y agoYou make it sound easy, but the patent office is severely overworked. Also, does the case just “go away?” Or do you have to file a motion to dismiss on the grounds that the patent is invalid?
- egdod 7y agoThat’s highly nontrivial. (And by the way, almost no one uses reexam anymore. It’s all about IPR these days.)
- JoeAltmaier 7y agoI.e. Broadcom stole Caltech patents and didn't pay royalties. Apple uses Broadcom chips (like many others). So they'll pay too.
- daddypro 7y agoShouldn't Broadcom be solely responsible for this? If apple buys a product, why would apple be responsible for details that went into the hardware on BC's end? Not trying to troll - but genuinely trying to understand the logic/law here.
- hnburnsy 7y agoYup, I think is is called patent infringement indemnification, but I'm guessing lawyers always sue everyone with deep pockets no matter what.
- sjg007 7y agoAre they custom chips Broadcom developed for Apple?
- ChuckMcM 7y agoThere is also the idea of patent exhaustion, which is that you get your royalties when the thing is implemented (ie the chip) and you don't get any more when that chip is re-sold. Of course Broadcom has some really wild patent "license" deals where they make you license the patent and buy the chips (that is also the subject of a court case)
- chrischen 7y agoThen there would be a loophole where you make an independent entity that “makes” something that shields infinite liability. It makes sense to go after all beneficiary owners and parties.
- stefan_ 7y agoYou mean like they make shell companies for patents so any adverse judgements don't sink the whole boat? Hell yeah, lets have it then.
- sitkack 7y agoThat could fund a couple of sweet astrophysics experiments.
- selimthegrim 7y agoOr free tuition for undergrads
- BalinKing 7y agoThe popular observation (truthful joke?) on campus is that they could give a full ride to 15 consecutive classes of undergrads with all that money...
- BalinKing 7y agoWith that said, though, Caltech does provide significant need-based financial aid (gotta give credit where credit’s due, after all).
- bhl 7y agoI remember this from a previous conversation on (what I think was) NYU medical school being tuition free for an incoming class, and that drove the admission rate way down because with no tuition, it got super competitive. I wonder if there’s a good trade off between competition and the amount of needs based tuition.
- randyrand 7y agoIf the patents were owned by a single individual instead of caltech, would the verdict be as large? They’d instantly be in the top 3000 richest people in the world.
- hcknwscommenter 7y agoPossibly. However, very few "single individual[s]" would have the resources to fund such inventions AND the associated patent procurement AND fund such a litigation. Moreover, this will be appealed and the final outcome could take a decade.
- davnicwil 7y agoYour last point has me thinking - hypothetically if an individual were in this situation, could they sell 'equity' in the eventual settlement in order to take money off the table now, rather than go bankrupt from legal expenses etc and get nothing? E.g. Sell 50% of the initially ruled $1.1B settlement for, say, $100MM. Anything like this ever happened?
- dlgeek 7y agoYes. The term you want to search for is litigation finance.
- froindt 7y agoPlanet Money had an episode on it this fall. https://www.npr.org/2019/10/02/766556249/episode-942-capitalism-in-the-courtroom https://www.npr.org/2019/10/02/766556249/episode-942-capital...
- paul7986 7y agoThe patent game more then a 100 years ago was great for the sole inventor. Now it's a game that's insanely & wrongfully stacked against those folks. Nowadays you need a war chest behind you to secure patents and even worse fight for your rights in court against another war chest that will litigate for years and years until someone's war chest is depleted or almost depleted.
- oh_sigh 7y agoDoes anyone have information about what the patent is for? Google search shows 500 general news articles with no specific information about the lawsuit.
- egdod 7y agoHere’s a blurb with the patent numbers. https://patentlyo.com/patent/2020/01/billion-verdict-caltech.html https://patentlyo.com/patent/2020/01/billion-verdict-caltech...
- Trias11 7y ago"... As a non-profit institution... " Sounds legit.
- OrgNet 7y agothey're probably going to have to pay their employees a bonus?
- easytiger 7y agois there an article on the details?
- artemisyna 7y agoCause someone will make this comment eventually: "Caltech" not "CalTech". :)
- WalterBright 7y agoYou beat me to it!
- BalinKing 7y agoIt’s honestly really sad that even _professional_ journalists don’t know how to spell it correctly :-(
- WalterBright 7y agohttps://www.caltech.edu/ https://www.caltech.edu/ tells the tale. I've never seen it spelled CalTech in anything from the university nor from any techer.
- brokensegue 7y ago"CalTech" used to be correct
- HHest 7y agoReference?
- brokensegue 7y agothere are signs around campus that still use the old spelling.
- selimthegrim 7y agoThe one on the exit ramp from the 210 doesn’t count
- btilly 7y agoThis decision saddens me. I strongly believe that the pursuing of patents gets in the way of the collaboration that helps science progress. It creates evidence of innovation (ie patents), but slows actual innovation. Anything that gives universities more of an incentive to pursue the patent angle, which this judgment does, will therefore be bad for science. :-( (In CS, whole areas have become minefields for this reason. For example go out and implement a wavelet compression algorithm for images without violating any patents. Are you sure you didn't violate patents? Really sure? Exactly!)
- rileymat2 7y agoBut in this case, a research institution is getting more money, presumably to be able to fund further research. It seems like a perfect counter example of what your worries are about slowing progress.
- btilly 7y agoI bet that the money that they get will largely go to lawyers, administration, and increased efforts around finding/litigating patents on current research. I am extremely dubious that it will result in research that advances the state of science. Science flourishes best when you share results and hypotheses early and often, then get feedback/inspire others. But that type of communication threatens patents, so inspires people to put their research into black boxes until the legal paperwork has been filed.
- staticautomatic 7y agoPatent litigation is expensive but you would hardly need a billion-dollar war chest to monetize a portfolio with a successful litigation history. Between contingency fee arrangements and litigation financing, you could essentially print money with little downside risk, albeit with far less upside potential than if you paid sticker price to litigate.
- shoguning 7y ago
- WalterBright 7y agoLive by the sword, die by the sword. I wonder when Apple, Broadcom, etc., will have enough of these pyrrhic patent lawsuit victories and start lobbying for an end, or at least a major curtailment, of the patent system.
- astrodust 7y agoWhy would Apple care? A billion dollars to them is a speeding ticket. It hurts smaller companies more. One hostile patent lawsuit can tank a startup or sink a small, established company that can't afford to fend it off. It's the smaller companies that should care and lobby as a collective.
- btilly 7y agoAccording to economic theory, the ability of a company to sustain profits in the long term is based on having barriers to entry to their market. This kind of patent threat is a barrier to entry, and suffering on the losing end of them is rent on the profit margin that they have been able to sustain. Therefore, even with these losses, the patent system is worthwhile for them.
- mirimir 7y agoTrue. But barriers to market entry is also a prong for establishing monopoly power. So it cuts both ways.
- bmdavi3 7y agoIf it were any other company I'd get depressed and say it's another victim of the tragedy of software patents. But Apple deserves every post-Creative Labs patent victory ruled against them. For anyone that doesn't know, in 2006 Apple was caught off guard and sued by Creative Labs over the iPod, resulting in a $100 million settlement. It was total nonsense and Jobs was right to be pissed, but what does he do? Does he get fired up to bring about patent reform? No! He doubles down on software patents himself and goes on to sue Samsung in the same shitty way in 2011. I mean, it's too late now to turn the ship around on software patents. It's never going to change. But 2006 - 2011 were prime growth years for Apple, where they could have made a great case to the public for how software patents were bad and used in a totally bogus way against a well liked American company. And if he didn't want to do that, he could have built up a library of patents to squirrel away for defensive purposes on a rainy day. But no. He got burned by Creative Labs, hated the experience, and turned around and did the same exact thing to a totally unrelated company. When it comes to software patents, fuck Steve Jobs and Apple. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/10/creative-pushed-steve-jobs-to-armor-up-for-the-smartphone-patent-war/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/10/creative-pushed-stev...
- lilyball 7y agoI think you're confusing software patents and design patents, because the latter is what Apple famously used against Samsung.
- bmdavi3 7y agoThank you. You're correct, I've wondered why this isn't mentioned more often, and maybe that's why. However even after realizing that, I personally still consider a design patent about rounded corners to be on the same level of B.S. as a software patent, and still stand by my conclusions. But I'd be interested to know why I shouldn't do that, and if you have more information I'm honestly all ears
- nodamage 7y agoYou make it sound like Samsung was quietly doing their own thing and then were blindsided by a lawsuit from Apple. But actually after the iPhone was released Samsung deliberately went through it screen by screen and produced a 132-page report on what features and interface elements they should steal from the iPhone. https://archive.org/details/436142-samsung-relative-evaluation-report-on-s1-iphone/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/436142-samsung-relative-evaluati... I don't have a great opinion of the patent industry in general but in this situation Samsung's behavior was pretty blatant and unethical (IMO), and went well beyond "rounded corners".
- mathattack 7y agoWill either company stop recruiting at CalTech as a result? Probably still worth it for CalTech, but very few schools are willing to take on Big Tech. Would Stanford ever do this?
- averros 7y agoCalTech is partially taxpayer-funded. Where's my part of that $1.1B? (Pro-rata taxes I paid).