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Comment Nothing has changed : Apple just explains it (Score 3, Informative) 270

Apple was forced by EU to be more forthcoming about warranty policies.

Apple provided warranty, as a MANUFACTURER, is limited to 1 year and Apple pushed it warranty extension for 2 to 3 years (2 years for iOS devices, 3 years for Macs). It covers a range of issues that can appear after the sell.

EU wasn't really happy with this because EU law mandates a 2 years warranty by the SELLER, for issue existing before the sell. EU thought that Apple was forcing clients to get a warranty extension even if they were entitled to a 2 year coverage (similar but not exactly identical).

Now Apple clearly states this distinction.

So if you bought your Apple product in another shop, after 1 year, you need to get in contact with that shop, that will contact Apple to identify the issue and see if this is linked to a preexisting problem or link to your usage. In the later case, your "seller provided" warranty won't help you.

Comment Not enough time to pass (Score 5, Informative) 402

This is a law-project tailored specifically to address the crazy killer that shot 7 people recently in France.

The presidential election is less than 1 month away and no more laws would be discussed or voted in the mean time. So this law would never pass.

The killer was under scrutiny since his return from Afghanistan. Since he hasn't done anything in France, he could be arrested and jailed. They weren't able to detect any suspicious behavior like planning to plant a bomb which is the most common terrorist act in Europe. We have very few gun-related deaths compared to the US, so such a killing spree is very unusual. This is the most obvious reason his planning went undetected.

The point of this stupid law is to give an excuse for the Police to arrest and jail anyone with a slight hint of suspect behavior, before they might be planning to commit actual crime.

As usual, this is stupid and inefficient.

Comment Unlimited = no overusage fee (Score 2) 433

For a customer, the best part of "unlimited" is not about being about to download petabytes of data.
The great part is about being able to download whatever he wants without worrying if he will be billed pricey overcharge fees for this.

He knows in advanced what he will pay every month, even if this is more than what he would have paid with a lower plan with overcharge fees.

Comment RTFA please : FOSS explains the difference (Score 1) 381

When a patent is part of standard, you can not use it to block people. You can only use it to get license from them.

If you proposed a "Fair, Raisonnable And Non-Discriminatory" (FRAND) licence scheme and this was rejected THEN you could ask for the licence to be imposed on the infringer or the products to be banned.
If you don't do propose a FRAND licence, it means that you did not respect your engagement made to the Standard Setting Organization and you lose your hability to enforce your patent.

Apple here complains that:
- Samsung and MMI never proposed licenses at all
- Samsung and MMI are trying to get Apple products blocked while with such patents the only thing you could get are forced licenses and not product blocking

The Nokia vs Apple was a good example where the distinct between FRAND and non-FRAND patent was clearly made and the corresponding requests were relevant.

Comment Re:One point - FRAND was a promise to ALL (Score 1, Insightful) 381

From TFA (the one from Florian, the patent expert, not DailyTech, the tech reporting site), Samsung itself complained about Ericsson and Rambus for the usage of FRAND or undisclosed-essential patents and they should be barred from enforcing them.

Apple didn't even want to prevent Samsung from enforcing them. It just wants to separate the cases between : "having to pay a licence for FRAND patents" and "being blocked from selling products because of non-FRAND patents".

Comment Re:FRAND Encumbered Patents (Score 1) 137

A FRAND encumbered patent can mostly allow obtaining licensing revenues. The only defense would be to enter a cross licensing deal where both party are avoiding paying licenses to each other.

There are 3 kinds of entities attacking Android :
- Apple wants Android blocked or at least some of its feature. Apple want to keep very distinctive feature to itself and does not intend to license them. A FRAND patent would help have Apple pay licensing fees, like it did for Nokia but it would not have Apple stop trying to block some features on Android phones.
- Microsoft wants to have revenues from Android so that device manufacturers would consider WP7 as a cheaper/same price alternative to Android. Here the MMI FRAND patents might help if Microsoft is found infringing those. However, Microsoft is handling the OS part : if MMI patents are related to hardware (like radio), those patents won't be able to provide revenues or cross licensing opportunities from Microsoft. Those are the kind of patent MMI would have leveraged against other Android licensees as it threatened to do.
- Patent Trolls or Non-Practicing Entities have no product to sell. No hardware. No software. So with FRAND patents or a plain vanilla patents, you can not retaliate by blocking its products or having them pay licenses.

In the end, only Microsoft kind of attack on Android might be curbed down by FRAND patents but this wouldn't affect much Apple and Patent Trolls.

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