{"id":1935,"date":"2019-03-15T12:49:41","date_gmt":"2019-03-15T12:49:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tantraanalyst.com\/insights\/?p=1935"},"modified":"2021-08-19T18:56:02","modified_gmt":"2021-08-19T18:56:02","slug":"would-you-pay-1-41-for-15-minutes-of-your-iphone-battery-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tantraanalyst.com\/ta\/would-you-pay-1-41-for-15-minutes-of-your-iphone-battery-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Would you pay $1.41 for 15 minutes of your iPhone battery-life?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
RCR Wireless News, March 15, 2019<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
A significant win for Qualcomm for its non-SEPs against Apple in a trail San Diego<\/span><\/h6>\n
The jury said yes. I mean they agreed that Apple has infringed Qualcomm\u2019s three\u00a0patents<\/a><\/span>\u00a0that increase battery-life and decrease the cost of iPhones. The jury also agreed to the full damages that amount to a total of $31 million, which comes to $1.4 for each of the infringed iPhone 7, 8 and X using Intel modems.<\/span><\/h6>\n
But, as I said before, this case was much more than the money involved, but more to decide what value Qualcomm\u2019s non-Standard Essential Patents (SEP) have. And $1.41 for just three such patents is very significant value, considering that Qualcomm\u2019s licenses contain almost 140,000 patents. \u00a0<\/span><\/h6>\n
In this trial, both the companies put a spirited fight. Qualcomm took a straight-forward, fact-based approach. On the contrary, Apple took a convoluted stance trying to make this fight more than just the patents under scrutiny. They argued that this is to do with their decision to start using modems from Qualcomm\u2019s competitor, Intel.<\/span><\/h6>\n
The arguments were very intense with many third-party expert witnesses as well as the employees of both companies and Intel. Many times, it came to as ridiculous as hairsplitting and defining the words in the English language. Of course, it was highly-technical as well, including jury listening to an trying to understand excruciating details about packet headers, graphics instructions and others.<\/span><\/h6>\n
Here is a brief description of the arguments from both parties. Please refer to my\u00a0earlier article<\/a><\/span>\u00a0regarding the details of the patents:<\/span><\/h6>\n
US Patent # 9,535,490<\/b><\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/h6>\n
This was the paten with arguments akin to hair-splitting and trying to understand the meaning of English words.<\/span><\/h6>\n
Apple\u2019s argument<\/strong><\/span> \u2013 The patent, as written requires the processors to \u201chold\u201d i.e. store the data in its own memory, and iPhone processors don\u2019t store data in their onboard memory, instead on a separate connected memory, hence the patent is not infringed. Also, patent requires that uplink transmission commence after completing downlink transmission. Since iPhones have overlapping downlink and uplink transmissions there is not infringement.<\/span><\/h6>\n
Qualcomm\u2019s argument<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0\u2013 The meaning of \u201chold\u201d is not to \u201cstore\u201d the data but to \u201caccumulate\u201d until there is enough to send, all of it one go. Also, the patent doesn\u2019t say that downlink transmission doesn\u2019t have to be complete before starting uplink.<\/span><\/h6>\n
Here is the question came to defining what the word \u201chold\u201d means, does it mean store or accumulate. Also, does \u201cafter transmission\u201d mean after completion of transmission or does it mean after the start of transmission.<\/span><\/h6>\n
I think the jury went with the intent of the patent and deemed it to be valid and infringed. Damages \u2013 $0.42 per infringed iPhone.<\/span><\/h6>\n
US Patent # 8,633,936<\/b><\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/h6>\n
Apple\u2019s argument\u00a0<\/b><\/span>\u2013 The patent requires that there be a single compiler, whereas iPhones have three separate compilers, hence there is no infringement.<\/span><\/h6>\n
Qualcomm\u2019s argument<\/b><\/span>\u00a0\u2013 The three separate compilers that Apple claims are not separate, but three phases\/stages of a single compiler, hence there is infringement.<\/span><\/h6>\n
Jury\u2019s decision was that there indeed is an infringement. Damages \u2013 $0.55 per infringed iPhone.<\/span><\/h6>\n
US Patent # 8,838,949<\/b><\/a><\/span><\/h6>\n
For this patent, there was a lot of drama and back and forth regarding one of Apple\u2019s witnesses, Mr. Arjun Siva. In the opening statement, Apple\u2019s counsel dramatically said that Mr. Siva was so angry when he found out about the patent, he voluntarily agreed to testify, taking time off from his work (he currently works for Google). She said that he will look in the eyes of the jury and say that this was his invention. But Mr. Siva had to be subpoenaed to testify. There were also allegation by Apple counsel of \u00a0witness tampering, which was retracted after Qualcomm counsel\u2019s strongly objection. Even after all the theatrics, when asked, Mr. Siva said that he was not there to claim he should be a co-inventor on the patent!<\/span><\/h6>\n
Apple\u2019s argument<\/b><\/span>\u00a0\u2013 The original idea for the patent came from Arjuna Siva, who was Apple employee at the time, and he should have been included as a co-inventor. Since he was not included, the patent is invalid and not infringed.<\/span><\/h6>\n
They also said the patent requires each data segment in the communication between the application processor and the modem be scatter loaded into memory, but the \u201cSegment 0\u201d, which they claim is a data segment is not scatter loaded, hence no infringement.<\/span><\/h6>\n
Qualcomm\u2019s argument<\/b><\/span>\u00a0\u2013 Arjuna Siva himself declined to claim the inventorship during his testimony. There is prior art relevant to what Mr. Siva provided, which is based on Qualcomm\u2019s old Gobi technology. Also, \u201cSegment 0\u201d is not just any data segment, so not scatter loading it will not invalidate the patent.<\/span><\/h6>\n
Again, jury opined that all of Qualcomm\u2019s claim was true and infringed. Damages \u2013 $0.44 per infringed iPhone.<\/span><\/h6>\n
This conclusive win gives Qualcomm a strong boost going into many other cases being fought in the near future. \u00a0One big trial is coming again in San Diego, in just a couple of weeks. For Apple, they have to reevaluate their strategy of trivializing the value of Qualcomm\u2019s non-SEPs, and possibly reconsider their larger argument that it\u2019s not just the patents in the trial but Apple\u2019s move away from Qualcomm\u2019s modem that is making latter to fight these cases.<\/span><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A significant win for Qualcomm for its non-SEPs against Apple in a trail San Diego The jury said yes. I mean they agreed that Apple has infringed Qualcomm\u2019s three\u00a0patents\u00a0that increase battery-life and decrease the cost of iPhones. The jury also agreed to the full damages that amount to a total of $31 million, which comes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1936,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"image","meta":{"mc4wp_mailchimp_campaign":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-image","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ipr","post_format-post-format-image"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tantraanalyst.com\/ta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tantraanalyst.com\/ta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tantraanalyst.com\/ta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tantraanalyst.com\/ta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tantraanalyst.com\/ta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tantraanalyst.com\/ta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1935\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tantraanalyst.com\/ta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tantraanalyst.com\/ta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tantraanalyst.com\/ta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tantraanalyst.com\/ta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}