U.S. Bans Some Cellphones For Patent Reasons

runner_one writes "According to the New York Times, A federal agency has banned imports of new cellphones made with Qualcomm semiconductors because the chips violate a patent held by Broadcom. The International Trade Commission said today that the import ban would not apply to mobile phone models that were imported on or before June 7." Update: 06/08 13:05 GMT by KD : Glenn Fleishman notes that Apple's iPhone will be allowed into the country, since it doesn't use any 3G chips. He adds that Apple "might have the most advanced smartphone on the market unless President Bush or his trade representative overturn the ruling (which they have the power to do)."

Re:Personal use?

[ForestGrump]

I believe the issue is with import to sell, not importing the phone for your personal use in business/vacation (and bringing it back home with you).

Grump

Re:what phones use this?

[halo1982]

Generally every CDMA phone with the exception of older Nokias. So that means nearly everything from Sprint and Verizon...also, this includes W-CDMA/HSDPA phones as well (think Cingular 3G). Every Samsung, Sanyo, LG...it's a lot of fuckin phones, man.

If you have a Sprint phone chances are you've seen a "Digital by Qualcomm" logo/sticker somewhere on it. (The exception being the Treos)

Re:Message to Qualcomm.

[TacoBellGrande]

Disclaimer: I work for Qualcomm. I'm not going to pretend I'm happy with everything we do in terms of patents, but its par for the course in this very patent-rich field. But your facts are in some cases wrong. GTE sued us, and the Nokia, Motorola, and Broadcom lawsuits were counter-suits.

ITC press release

[Takichi]

You can get a better idea of what happened if you read the International Trade Commission's press release [usitc.gov]. At the bottom of the page is a little background information to get a sense of what happened prior to their decision.

It says that it found a violation on U.S. Patent No. 6,714,983. Here's the link to the patent [google.com].

One thing to note is that the ITC investigates and makes recommendations to congress and the president. It's not actually a court of law or policy making body. So I think this from the article:

A federal agency has banned imports of new cellphones made with Qualcomm semiconductors

isn't really true. Especially when later in the article it states that the government has 60 days to approve or overturn the order made by the ITC.

Re:what phones use this?

[Phil John]

A few HTC Smart Phones use Qualcomm Chips IIRC. The new HTC Kaiser [pdadb.net] (slide out keyboard w/flip up screen, GPS, WM 6) has a Qualcomm Chip core powering it, doing the GPS and also Graphics, so unless this is overturned people in the states are going to miss out on a funky little device.

Re:what phones use this?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you have a Sprint phone chances are you've seen a "Digital by Qualcomm" logo/sticker somewhere on it.

Interestingly, some phones based on the Ericsson chipset have this sticker too. I heard this was due to some patent lawsuit. So "Digital by Qualcomm" means "uses technologies that Qualcomm patented", not necessarily that the hardware or software was developed by them.

try living in the UK.

[oliverthered]

a recent ruling in the uk [out-law.com] stated that compensation should be paid on a patent that's been granted even if that patent is subsequently found to be invalid.

Now that sucks

Re:US Patent office should pay compensation

[evilviper]

How exactly does the free market go about fixing limited duration government granted monopolies (a.k.a. patents)?

Umm, isn't it obvious?

Alternative methods to accomplish the same goal have been used as patent work-arounds from the earliest days. If not for someone working-around the Wright Brother's patents, jets would be using "wing warping" instead of "flaps."

Besides that, the free market constantly lobbies the government... if they get bit by broad patents enough times, they'll put their efforts towards ending that.

And finally, if numerous companies go out of business, the patent office will no longer be over-loaded...

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:US Patent office should pay compensation

[general_re]

Every time they issue a patent that's later invalidated, they should pay compensation for issuing the patent.

The problem here, has and always will be the over willingness of the patent office to issue patents when the invention preexists but is not documented publicly, or where it's a minor increment of an existing variation. It's in the law that they have to test for obviousness and prior art, but they so narrowly define those terms as to remove the tests.

The free market will fix it, make them pay for their mistakes just like every other professional body.

I don't know what's more disturbing - the fact that you're this amazingly naive, or the fact that at least one other person out there found this tripe anything but naive. The "free market" will dissuade the USPTO from granting bad patents, will it? And how, pray tell, will it do that when the Patent Office has a legal monopoly on the granting of patents? It's not like there's any competition for them to fear, where you can go to some other agency to get a patent when you're unhappy with the way they grant patents.

And then, even better, "we" are supposed to punish "them" when "they" fuck up, by fining them. Except that, as a government agency, the USPTO always has access to the biggest ATM in the universe, the American taxpayer. So what you're really proposing is that *I* pay a fine every time the Patent Office fucks up - "we" get to punish ourselves for bad patents. Which is a proposal where I expect most people's reaction will be "are you out of your fucking mind?"

The only possible solution is to change the laws governing the USPTO if you're unhappy with the way things are currently going. I'm as laissez-faire as the next guy, but there is no "free market" solution to the problem of overbroad or poorly thought-out patents, unless you scrap the whole system. And the odds of that are basically nil, so you're back to changing the laws in order to bring about different outcomes.

Re:US Patent office should pay compensation

[Anonymous Coward]

Besides that, the free market constantly lobbies the government... if they get bit by broad patents enough times, they'll put their efforts towards ending that.

And finally, if numerous companies go out of business, the patent office will no longer be over-loaded...

Two major flaws with your argument. One, you are treating the "free market" as if it were one monolithic organization with a single obejctive. The reality is that each and every company within the free market will feel differently about patents, depending on which ones they each own. Second, you treat businesses as if they are a finite resource. If enough go out of business, according to you, there won't be an overload at the patent office. Again, reality is vastly different from your ideal here, in that companies are constantly being created and going out of business. In order for your worldview to play out, there will need to be a moratorium on the creation of new businesses.

Re:US Patent office should pay compensation

[mr3038]

How exactly does the free market go about fixing limited duration government granted monopolies (a.k.a. patents)?

Alternative methods to accomplish the same goal have been used as patent work-arounds from the earliest days. If not for someone working-around the Wright Brother's patents, jets would be using "wing warping" instead of "flaps."

Yes, that is a work-around. Notice, however, that the whole patent system was originally created to help sharing of information, namely inventions. If you made an invention and made it publicly available, in return the government granted you a limited monopoly.

Nowadays, this has twisted into reality where government grants you a monopoly and you absolute do not share your "invention". Instead, you use your monopoly to prevent related innovation by others. The government grants you (limited) monopoly and in return you share a piece of document that, more often than not, shares zero information about the real invention you possibly did. In case of software, the only thing that really could describe your invention correctly would be the source code. However, that is not required to get a software patent. That's where the problem is - you can get a patent to protect your invention without disclosing that very same invention.

Re:No big deal

[jratcliffe]

Asia is large and growing rapidly, but a huge portion of that growth is driven by sales to the US market - remember that the US economy is more than five times the size of the Chinese economy, and nearly twice the size of the Chinese, Japanese, and Korean economies combined. Loss of access to the US market would be a huge lose/lose for both Asian economies AND the US.

Re:Message to Qualcomm.

[Anonymous Coward]

Mac OS X is locked to Macs, even where Mac hardware and PC hardware barely differs. Apple uses Trusted Computing to implement this, with major components of Mac OS X encrypted.

Re:Message to Qualcomm.

[Sancho]

Ever tried to install OS X on a non-Apple computer?

No, you don't have to do activation, but they use DRM to restrict installs of OS X to their own iron.

Re:Personal use?

[The Vulture]

Try to enter the United States through Pearson International Airport. Everybody whom I've spoken to that has done it (as well as myself) have experienced nothing but rudeness and/or incompetence from the Customs officials. Out of six times (once per year), I have only had one Customs officer who wasn't rude, or at least downright grumpy. Additionally, if they think that they can hold something over your head, they will (and they've threatened refusal to let me back in to the U.S. before).

One Customs officer, after approving me, as I was about to walk away said, "You should watch C-Span - I hear that they're about to revoke a bunch of H1s in your (software) field".

The most pleasant experience I had was entering San Francisco from a foreign country - no issues at all, the process was fast and smooth, and the officer was very pleasant.

I await the nightmare that shall be Pearson International in a few weeks when I'm sure I'll get a Customs officer who has no idea how to handle an "Adjustment of Status".

-- Joe