【译】Smart-phone lawsuits

Smart-phone lawsuits

智能手机诉讼

 

The great patent battle

伟大的专利权战争

 

Nasty legal spats between tech giants may be here to stay

科技巨头之间令人生厌的口水仗将继续下去

 

Oct 21st 2010

翻译：phinecos于2010-10-25

 

HISTORY buffs still wax poetic about the brutal patent battles a century ago between the Wright brothers and Glenn Curtiss, another aviation pioneer. The current smart-phone patent war does not quite have the same romance, but it could be as important.

    时至今日，一个世纪以前怀特兄弟和另一位航空业先驱Glenn Curtiss之间史诗般残酷而壮观的专利权斗争任然为人们所津津乐道。今天智能手机领域的专利权战争虽然没有前者那么富有浪漫色彩，但依然算得上举足轻重。

Hardly a week passes without a new case. Motorola sued Apple this month, having itself been sued by Microsoft a few days earlier. Since 2006 the number of mobile-phone-related patent complaints has increased by 20% annually, according to Lex Machina, a firm that keeps a database of intellectual-property spats in America.

几乎每周都会有一起新的专利权诉讼。本月摩托罗拉起诉了苹果，而它自己在稍早几天却被微软起诉了。据Lex Machina的统计数据显示，从2006年起，移动电话相关的专利权诉讼已经按每年20%的速度激增。

Most suits were filed by patent owners who hail from another industry, such as Kodak (a firm from a bygone era that now makes printers), or by patent trolls (firms that buy patents not in order to make products, but to sue others for allegedly infringing them). But in recent months the makers of handsets and related software themselves have become much more litigious, reports Joshua Walker, the boss of Lex Machina.

大部分诉讼都是由来自其他产业的专利持有者，典型代表入柯达（过去它可不是做打印机的...），或者是专利钓鱼者（专值那种将专利购买到手，但又不用于生产产品，而是专门起诉其他公司侵犯其专利权的公司）。据Lex Machina负责人，Joshua Walker程，在最近几个月里，手持设备和相关软件厂商已经越来越热衷于提起诉讼了。

This orgy for lawyers is partly a result of the explosion of the market for smart-phones. IDC, a market-research firm, expects that 270m smart-phones will be sold this year: 55% more than in 2009. “It has become worthwhile to defend one’s intellectual property,” says Richard Windsor of Nomura, an investment bank.

专利律师们的狂欢很大程度上是由于智能手机市场的爆炸性增长。市场调研公司IDC预测今年将会售出约2.7亿部智能手机，与2009年相比增加55%。来自Nomura投资银行的Richard Windsor称，“在这么巨大的市场面前，花力气保护自己的知识产权是值得的。”。

Yet there is more than this going on. Smart-phones are not just another type of handset, but fully-fledged computers, which come loaded with software and double as digital cameras and portable entertainment centres. They combine technologies from different industries, most of them patented. Given such complexity, sorting out who owns what requires time and a phalanx of lawyers.

事情远不止这么简单。智能手机不仅仅是另一种手持设备，而是可以视为一台功能完善的计算机，它配备了操作系统，甚至可以作为相机和移动的娱乐中心来使用。它们结合了不同产业的科技，而这些技术大部分都是专利所有的。考虑到这样的复杂性，要理清楚到底谁拥有哪些专利权是一件极其耗费时间和人力的事情。

The convergence of different industries has also led to a culture clash. When it comes to intellectual property, mobile-phone firms have mostly operated like a club. They jointly develop new technical standards: for example, for a new generation of wireless networks. They then license or swap the patents “essential” to this standard under “fair and reasonable” conditions.

不同产业的融合也导致了产业文化的冲突。当涉及到知识产权问题时，手机公司大部分都表现得像一家俱乐部一样。他们联合起来开发新技术标准：比如，开发新一代的无线网络。然后他们会以“公平合理”的条件对这一标准中核心的专利进行专利授权或彼此之间交换专利。

Of apps and scraps

      关于应用软件和彼此之间的争吵

Not being used to such a collectivist set-up, Apple refused to pay up, which triggered the first big legal skirmish over smart-phones. A year ago Nokia lobbed a lawsuit at Apple, alleging that its American rival’s iPhone infringes on a number of its “essential patents”. A couple of months later, Apple returned the favour, alleging that Nokia had copied some iPhone features. Since then both sides have upped the ante by filing additional complaints.

由于不习惯于这样一种集体化的组织，苹果拒绝为此买单，于是它率先挑起了第一起关于智能手机的大型法律诉讼。一年以前诺基亚对苹果发起了诉讼，指责苹果的iPhone侵犯了其拥有的许多“重要专利”。几个月后，苹果发起了反击，指责诺基亚复制了iPhone的一些特性。自那以后双方都持续不断地发起新的针对对方的诉讼。

Lending ferocity to this legal firefight is the fact that competition in the smart-phone market is not merely about individual products, but entire platforms and operating systems (see chart). These are the infrastructures that allow other firms to develop applications, or “apps”, for these devices. Should any one firm gain an important lead, it might dominate the industry for decades—just as Microsoft has dominated the market for personal-computer (PC) software.

      法律纠纷越来越激烈的原因在于智能手机市场的竞争不仅仅是个别产品上，而是在整个平台和操作系统层面。平台是提供给其他企业在其上开发应用软件的基础设施。一旦某一个企业在这一领域取得领先者的地位，那么它将可能主宰这一产业几十年---就像微软曾经主宰了个人计算机软件市场那样。

Yet there is a difference between the smart-phone war and the earlier one over PCs. There is a new type of player: firms with open-source platforms. Google, for instance, which makes its money from advertisements, does not charge for Android (its operating system for smart-phones) and lets others modify the software. This makes life hard for vendors of proprietary platforms, such as Apple and Microsoft.

      但是和早前PC领域的竞争不同，智能手机领域有其特别之处。竞争中出现了一种新类型的选手：推广开源平台的企业。例如Google,它推出了Android智能手机系统，但系统本身却是可以免费使用的，而且允许其他企业在其上进行个性化定制，Google只是依靠广告来赚钱。这样的策略让依赖于封闭平台的对手头疼不已，比如苹果和微软。

This explains another set of closely watched lawsuits. In March Apple sued HTC, a Taiwanese maker of smart-phones, which responded in kind a couple of months later. Earlier this month it was Microsoft’s turn to file a lawsuit against Motorola, which is likely to retaliate soon. And Oracle, a maker of business software, has sued Google directly, albeit over a different issue, concerning how Android uses Java, a programming language.

这样的平台之争导致了另一种引人关注的诉讼。三月份苹果起诉了台湾的智能手机制造商HTC,几个月后HTC发起了回击。本月初微软将摩托罗拉告上了法庭，看起来后者很快就会发起报复性诉讼。商业软件厂商甲骨文直接将Google告上了法庭，起诉的理由是Android非法地使用了Java编程语言。

Some expect Apple and Microsoft to sue Google. Yet this is unlikely, because the online giant will be hard to pin down. Google does not earn any money with Android, which makes it difficult to calculate any potential damage awards and patent royalties.

有人期待苹果和微软也去起诉Google。但这不大可能发生，因为这个互联网巨人是很难被击倒的。Google并没有从Android身上直接赚取利益，这一点使得计算潜在的损失和专利税费变得十分困难。

The frenzy of smart-phone litigation could last for years. The combatants have deep pockets and much to lose. Google is bounding ahead: Android now runs 32% of smart-phones sold in America, whereas Apple’s iPhone has only 25% of the market and the BlackBerry has 26%, according to Nielsen, another market research firm.

智能手机领域的疯狂诉讼局面可能会持续数年。笑到最后的人才是最后的赢家。Google目前暂时领先：据市场调研机构尼尔森称，Android已经占据了美国智能手机市场的32%，而苹果的iPhone仅占25%，黑莓约占26%。

Similarly, Nokia, which has already lost ground to Apple, cannot afford to see its intellectual property devalued. Should Nokia prevail, Apple may be slapped with $1 billion or so in licensing fees, estimates Christopher White of Bristol York, an investment bank.

同样地，诺基亚败在苹果手下后，已经无力承受其知识产权的迅速贬值。据供职于一家投资银行的Christopher估算，如果诺基亚获胜，那么苹果将可能需要支付10亿美元的专利授权费，

If the market for computing tablets (which are essentially oversized smart-phones) takes off as expected, there will be even more lawsuits. Apple is set to sell some 15m iPads by the end of the year. Gartner, a market-research firm, predicts that the overall tablet market will reach nearly 55m units in 2011.

如果平板电脑市场如市场预期般爆发，那么将会出现更多相关的诉讼。预计苹果今年将售出约1500万部iPad。市场研究机构Gartner预测到2011年，平板电脑市场的总销量将达到5500万。

Eventually, even lawsuits must come to an end. How much harm they will cause remains to be seen. If Apple wins against HTC, that would be bad news for upstart handset firms. Until a few years ago, HTC only made devices for others, but now it has become a brand of its own.

最终，即使诉讼得以结束，但它们所造成的损失则无法估量。如果苹果告倒了HTC，那么对于那些出于成长期的手机公司来说是一个坏消息。几年以前，HTC还只是为其他公司做代工，但现在它已经拥有了自己的品牌。

 

Litigation may also make smart-phones dearer. Mr White of Bristol York estimates that device makers already have to pay royalties for 200-300 patents for a typical smart-phone. Patent costs are 15-20% of its selling price, or about half of what the hardware components cost. “If 50 people [each] want 2% of a device’s value, we have a problem,” says Josh Lerner, a professor at Harvard Business School.

诉讼也使得智能手机越来越昂贵。 Bristol York的怀特先生估计对于一台典型的智能手机来说，制造厂商已经为其付出了200到300项专利授权费。专利费用支出占到了手机售价的15-20% ，或者约占其硬件成本的一半左右。哈佛商学院的

Josh Lerner 称，“如果50个用户每人想要回手机价值的2%，那么我们就遇到大麻烦了。”     

Finally, there is a danger that the current intensity of litigation will become normal. Pessimists predict an everlasting patent war, much as the wider information-technology industry seems permanently embroiled in antitrust action. The Wright brothers’ legal skirmishes were put to rest only by the outbreak of the first world war. With luck, the smart-phone patent battles will end more quietly.

最后，有一种危险的趋势是目前这种密集的法律诉讼将常态化。持悲观论调的研究者预测专利战争会永远持续下去，就像更为广泛的信息科技产业似乎永久性地实施反垄断行为一样。怀特兄弟的法律诉讼得以结束只是由于第一次世界大战的爆发。如果有幸的话，智能手机领域的专利战争还是平静地结束为好。