Apple Offers $1 Per iPhone to Settle Motorola Patent Case

Apple and Google subsidiary Motorola Mobility will face off in a Wisconsin courtroom next week, unless Motorola accepts a settlement offer from Apple. Apple has offered to pay no more than $1 for every device it sells that uses the Motorola technology.

Florian Mueller of FOSS Patents reported, “Five days ahead of a FRAND contract trial in the Western District of Wisconsin, Apple has formally declared to the court its willingness to pay Motorola Mobility for a license to its standard-essential wireless patents (‘wireless’ meaning cellular and WiFi standards in this context), but it will only write an immediate check to the wholly-owned Google subsidiary if the per-unit royalty does not exceed $1. If the court sets a FRAND rate at or below $1, Apple will take a license and start to pay right away. Otherwise Apple will appeal the decision and exhaust all of its legal options before Google gets anything.”

Computerworld’s Martyn Williams explained, “The patents in question are considered vital to the UMTS, GPRS, GSM and 802.11 standards in which they are used, so Motorola Mobility is required to license them to competitors on “fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory terms,” often referred to by the acronym FRAND.”

Katie Marsal from Apple Insider noted, “The rate Apple has said it is willing to pay is significantly lower than the 2.25 percent of Apple’s sales that Motorola seeks for standard-essential patents.”

Tuaw’s Randy Nelson observed, “This news comes two months after Apple announced its intent to license similar patents from Motorola in Germany, although the amount it will pay per device there has yet to be determined. In its settlement offering here in the U.S., Apple asked the Wisconsin court to set a rate for licensing the patents in Germany based on a FRAND basis.”

RELATED NEWS AND ANALYSIS

• Huawei’s AI Update: Things Are Moving Faster Than We Think

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  December 04, 2020

• Keeping Machine Learning Algorithms Honest in the ‘Ethics-First’ Era

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Guest Author,
  November 18, 2020

• Key Trends in Chatbots and RPA

  FEATURE |  By Guest Author,
  November 10, 2020

• Top 10 AIOps Companies

  FEATURE |  By Samuel Greengard,
  November 05, 2020

• What is Text Analysis?

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Guest Author,
  November 02, 2020

• How Intel’s Work With Autonomous Cars Could Redefine General Purpose AI

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Rob Enderle,
  October 29, 2020

• Dell Technologies World: Weaving Together Human And Machine Interaction For AI And Robotics

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Rob Enderle,
  October 23, 2020

• The Super Moderator, or How IBM Project Debater Could Save Social Media

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  October 16, 2020

• Top 10 Chatbot Platforms

  FEATURE |  By Cynthia Harvey,
  October 07, 2020

• Finding a Career Path in AI

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Guest Author,
  October 05, 2020

• CIOs Discuss the Promise of AI and Data Science

  FEATURE |  By Guest Author,
  September 25, 2020

• Microsoft Is Building An AI Product That Could Predict The Future

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  September 25, 2020

• Top 10 Machine Learning Companies 2020

  FEATURE |  By Cynthia Harvey,
  September 22, 2020

• NVIDIA and ARM: Massively Changing The AI Landscape

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Rob Enderle,
  September 18, 2020

• Continuous Intelligence: Expert Discussion [Video and Podcast]

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By James Maguire,
  September 14, 2020

• Artificial Intelligence: Governance and Ethics [Video]

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By James Maguire,
  September 13, 2020

• IBM Watson At The US Open: Showcasing The Power Of A Mature Enterprise-Class AI

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  September 11, 2020

• Artificial Intelligence: Perception vs. Reality

  FEATURE |  By James Maguire,
  September 09, 2020

• Anticipating The Coming Wave Of AI Enhanced PCs

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  September 05, 2020

• The Critical Nature Of IBM’s NLP (Natural Language Processing) Effort

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Rob Enderle,
  August 14, 2020