This post is closely related to the final part of the previous post, European and German patent stats confirm China has taken lead over U.S. in digital communications patent filings: Huawei, Ericsson lead the pack; OPPO ahead of Nokia; Apple is nowhere. On some other occasion I’ll also comment on the latest evidence of Apple engaging in highly abusive self-preferencing, which is that Apple–after imposing restrictions and requirements on iOS in-app advertisements under a pro-privacy pretext–now encourages its users to allow tracking within Apple’s apps while forcing third-party app makers to scare users away from granting such permission. Suffice it to say for now that EU competition chief Margrethe Vestager had warned Apple against precisely that behavior in this very context.
On May 9, the feedback and consultation period for the European Commission’s “new framework for standard-essential patents” initiative ended. Meanwhile the Commission has published the feedback it received. This blog reported on the mid-February start of the feedback period and reminded its readers of the deadline when it was approaching fast.
In their submissions to the European Commission’s DG GROW, Qualcomm and Nokia call out Apple (and some of its allies in this context) on its stated goal of devaluing SEPs. Nokia’s submission actually recognizes that Apple, as a result of having acquired Intel’s baseband chipset division, at least makes some technical contributions to standardization, which is more than digital giants Amazon, Google, and Facebook can say, or even the world’s largest network equipment maker, Cisco. Those other companies sent delegates to a June 28-July 2, 2021 3GPP workshop regarding Release 18 of the 5G standard, but made zero technical contributions. In multi-player computer games, such behavior is called “lurking.” Nokia suspects those companies (some of which actually pretend to be big-time O-RAN supporters, but not really contributing to that standard-setting effort either) merely wnated “to observe, to learn how to implement and use the technology, but they did not contribute to its development.” Apple sent more delegates (34) than Nokia (19) and almost as many as Ericsson, but made only about half as many technical contributions as Nokia, which in turn made fewer than Ericsson.
Nokia goes on to explain that “Apple’s recent contributions […] must be put into perspective.” They are “largely handset related and not relatedto network equipment.” Second, Apple has traditionally kept its chipsets proprietary, so whatever it develops won’t e put to use in mobile network equipment. Also:
“Apple does not need to rely upon FRAND licensing revenue to support its participation in standards development. Instead, it can count on its massive profits generated by its closed ecosystem, the lock-in it has with its customers, and its app store monopoly to fund its standards participation. This is a luxury that other contributors do not have.”
I may not deem every Nokia declared-essential patent truly essential, and just this week I expressed serious doubts about the validity of a Nokia non-SEP. But I increasingly find myself in agreement with Nokia on certain policy issues, such as the following sentence from Nokia’s submission to the EC regarding Apple and its friends’ efforts to devalue SEPs:
“Most large tech companies like Amazon, Apple, Cisco, and Google chose not to invest in developing mobile networks and standards. They profit significantly from sales of products that implement and use the standards developed largely by others. To keep their input costs for their products as low as possible, they, and their sponsored lobbying groups like t
