Apple Spent $100M In Its Case Against HTC

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I am not going to take sides here or ridicule either of the two companies involved in this legal dispute. Why? Because I am still daydreaming about all the things I could do with that $100M. :eek:

But a person close to the situation tells me there’s a rumor going around among the lawyers that Apple spent $100 million just on its first set of claims against HTC. Who knows if it’s true, but if so, Apple didn’t get a lot for its money.
 
It is simply baffling the lengths Apple will go to sue its competition out of existence.
 
The whole reason Apple hoards cash is because they want go after anyone that they feel profits from their designs. They will spend whatever it takes to win.
 
Pffff...chicken feed for Apple, they will recoup that money on the next 3.5" wide smartphone in the first hour of launch.
 
I'm betting Apple looks at it from the stance that every dollar spent to win a case now helps them get royalties without going to court in the future. That's the only way this makes financial sense.
 
Meanwhile Microsoft just goes to Android device makers and says "Give us money or else..." and that strategy has been incredibly successful for whatever reason.
 
Apple spent that much because decisive decisions on a few of those patents would have allowed them to destroy Android. Not just HTC, all Android phones would have been targeted next.

Meanwhile Microsoft just goes to Android device makers and says "Give us money or else..." and that strategy has been incredibly successful for whatever reason.

MS is willing to license, Apple usually is not. It makes money sense to just pay MS to operate. Apple just wants all other smart phones gone.
 
It is simply baffling the lengths Apple will go to sue its competition out of existence.

Apple's "If we can't innovate, go ahead and litigate," mantra isn't working too well. Costing them hundreds of millions and even losing most of the patent cases against Samsung and HTC.

I find this even funnier because my sister has an iPhone 4 and she couldn't convince our mother to get an iPhone when mom decided she wanted a smartphone after Christmas. Instead mom wanted the Droid RAZR because of what my phone can do versus the iPhone. In this case mom really wanted Widgets and the larger screen. :D
 
Oh Apple... always being anti-competitive and doing everything but focusing on making the best product.
 
And this still begs the question, why is Apple not forced to go through anti-trust cases like Microsoft? Apple controls everything from the software to the hardware, to production and sues the crap out of all opposition and yet they don't get investigated for anti-trust?
 
And this still begs the question, why is Apple not forced to go through anti-trust cases like Microsoft? Apple controls everything from the software to the hardware, to production and sues the crap out of all opposition and yet they don't get investigated for anti-trust?

Because thats not "abusing market dominance"....... apparently.

But allowing people to use Google search apparently is.
 
And this still begs the question, why is Apple not forced to go through anti-trust cases like Microsoft? Apple controls everything from the software to the hardware, to production and sues the crap out of all opposition and yet they don't get investigated for anti-trust?

Microsoft was not busted for having a popular product ecosystem. That is not illegal.

Microsoft was busted for leveraging their monopoly on one product (Windows) in order to push other products in their ecosystem and obstruct competitors to those products. Notable examples include obstructing Netscape in favor of IE, and Lotus Notes in favor of Office.

Apple's abuse of their iDevice ecosystem would be something like them launching their own cell network, and then intentionally crippling iPhone speeds on competitor networks like Sprint/Verizon/ATT.
 
Microsoft was not busted for having a popular product ecosystem. That is not illegal.

Microsoft was busted for leveraging their monopoly on one product (Windows) in order to push other products in their ecosystem and obstruct competitors to those products. Notable examples include obstructing Netscape in favor of IE, and Lotus Notes in favor of Office.

Apple's abuse of their iDevice ecosystem would be something like them launching their own cell network, and then intentionally crippling iPhone speeds on competitor networks like Sprint/Verizon/ATT.

Wrong. Apple has developed a product to compete in a particular arena, then leveraged vague patents to try and sue their competition out of the marketplace. So that is even worse than what Microsoft was doing. Also Apple has a complete anti-competition stance within their model as well. Look at how they handle their App Store. They also are involved in price fixing. And even further, Microsoft was only involved in their OS and what ran on that OS, not on the hardware. Apple controls the hardware and software and has anti-competitive practices for both. They even go after people for innocently using anything resembling their name or logo, which is a basic word and object. They are completely anti-competitive, far more so than Microsoft. Apple is a far worse violator of anti-competition clauses.
 
Wrong. Apple has developed a product to compete in a particular arena, then leveraged vague patents to try and sue their competition out of the marketplace. So that is even worse than what Microsoft was doing. Also Apple has a complete anti-competition stance within their model as well. Look at how they handle their App Store. They also are involved in price fixing. And even further, Microsoft was only involved in their OS and what ran on that OS, not on the hardware. Apple controls the hardware and software and has anti-competitive practices for both. They even go after people for innocently using anything resembling their name or logo, which is a basic word and object. They are completely anti-competitive, far more so than Microsoft. Apple is a far worse violator of anti-competition clauses.

Point to a specific law they have broken.

Being a patent troll and suing infringes is not illegal
Vigorously defending a ridiculous trademark is not illegal (Super Bowl, anyone?)
Having a popular ecosystem that holds a large market share is not illegal
 
To add to my point...

Contrary to what many think, there is no generic "don't be a douche" laws in business.

Does Apple have some underhanded business practices? Oh yes. They also have an army of lawyers paid to do nothing but make sure that they don't cross fine line between general doucheyness and illegal business practices.
 
To add to my point...

Contrary to what many think, there is no generic "don't be a douche" laws in business.

Does Apple have some underhanded business practices? Oh yes. They also have an army of lawyers paid to do nothing but make sure that they don't cross fine line between general doucheyness and illegal business practices.

Isn't that what anti trust suites supposed to do? To catch companies abusing the system? They can't have come up with the concept of "anti trust" without expecting the companies it's meant for to use technicalities and stop them from weaseling their way out.
 
Lawyers and court fees.

Care to elaborate? Is 100 million normal expense for a patent suite? Are other companies also expected to spend this much? How much money has HTC spent on their end?
 
Why didn't they go the cheaper option and just buy a few senators to get the law changed... I mean a few more, obviously.

This is a good thing though, they do their typical underhanded cowardly evil crap and lose big. :D
 
The company set a new record for quarterly revenue and profit in Q1 of 2012, netting $46.33 billion in total with $13.06 billion earnings -- the latter number representing about half of the company's annual profit. That's nearly twice what Apple announced for the same (at the time record-setting) period last year -- $26.74 billion and $6 billion, respectively

They can throw a bunch of 100Ms around and not a single **** will be given.
 
Isn't that what anti trust suites supposed to do? To catch companies abusing the system? They can't have come up with the concept of "anti trust" without expecting the companies it's meant for to use technicalities and stop them from weaseling their way out.

Keeping legal procedures going for various patents is not abusing the system. And antitrust? how, because Apple is choosing to blow through $100 million for something that HTC could change in a day? It's not exactly illegal to use the legal system as a tax if you can keep coming up with valid issues.
 
Id just like to point out that the iphone is 199 on contract, most other smart/super phones are in and around there. The macbook airs are slightley more expensive when evenly matched but start at a lower price the the asus zenbook. The macbook pros yes are more expensive but that still doesn't justify everyone saying their products are twice as expensive or more for less...
 
Id just like to point out that the iphone is 199 on contract, most other smart/super phones are in and around there. The macbook airs are slightley more expensive when evenly matched but start at a lower price the the asus zenbook. The macbook pros yes are more expensive but that still doesn't justify everyone saying their products are twice as expensive or more for less...
their entire consumer computer market is quite overpriced. iMac, Mac Pro, MacBooks, etc.
 
And no one is forcing people to buy from them. Every time I see people complain about it, it reminds me of someone complaining about people buying Mercury's when Fords are available. People think it's worth it, so good for them.
 
Point to a specific law they have broken.

Being a patent troll and suing infringes is not illegal
Vigorously defending a ridiculous trademark is not illegal (Super Bowl, anyone?)
Having a popular ecosystem that holds a large market share is not illegal

The Sherman Act. Despite what people believe the Sherman Act actually prohibited monopolies and conspiring to corner the marketplace using said monopoly to do so. The whole reason this issue is a problem is because our judicial system decided to create laws that went against what was codified to become the Sherman Act.

You can go ahead an read the Sherman Act but you'll easily find that monopolies contrary to popular belief are illegal by rule of law. The Supreme Court however, created legislation (because there was no precedence, much less constitutional authority) by creating the term "rule of reason" which impacted the effectiveness of the Sherman Act.
 
Point to a specific law they have broken.

Being a patent troll and suing infringes is not illegal
Vigorously defending a ridiculous trademark is not illegal (Super Bowl, anyone?)
Having a popular ecosystem that holds a large market share is not illegal

What the above person mentioned. Also, point to which specific laws Microsoft broke that are any worse than what Apple has done? For every action you can blame on Microsoft, I can almost guaranttee I can find an even worse action by Apple. The "only" difference in the past was that MS had cornered the market on the popular OS and then used that leverage to promote their other products. Well guess, what? Apple is trying to do the exact same thing, only they are being even more anti-competitive. Remember that Microsoft makes their product to run on just about whatever hardware you want to run it on. Apple rigorously controls how you can use their product and then tries to push out any other competition so that not only do you have to buy their OS, but also the hardward, and their approved accessories, and then their approved support, and then their approved applications. You can see the trend here...
 
You can go ahead an read the Sherman Act but you'll easily find that monopolies contrary to popular belief are illegal by rule of law. The Supreme Court however, created legislation (because there was no precedence, much less constitutional authority) by creating the term "rule of reason" which impacted the effectiveness of the Sherman Act.

No that isn't the case. From one of the original framers of the Sherman Act:

"...who merely by superior skill and intelligence...got the whole business because nobody could do it as well as he could was not a monopolist..(but was if) it involved something like the use of means which made it impossible for other persons to engage in fair competition"

It is only a crime if the monopolist engages in anti-competitive acts.

If you go back to when Microsoft was convicted, it wasn't for having a monopoly, it was was for doing things like going to PC retailer and setting up deals where they had to pay for a Windows OS license on every PC they sold, even if they didn't include a copy of Windows OS.

This meant if you wanted to buy a PC with OS/2, you had to pay more even if OS/2 was less expensive, because you were forced to pay for Window as well. This was a blatantly anti-competitive act.
 
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